


Teen Wolf/The Originals - Bonds

by Lemmerman



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Originals (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-13 09:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11756613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemmerman/pseuds/Lemmerman
Summary: A mysterious new enemy arrives at the Mikaelson Compound, accompanied by phantoms of enemies long vanquished. When the Originals accidentally send this creature across dimensions, they realise that they have committed a grave error - if they leave it unchecked, the monster may gain enough magical power to destroy all of reality as they know it, and they set off in pursuit.But this strange new world has protectors of its own - the McCall Pack, who aren't exactly glad to see the Mikaelson family. But in order to stop the end of all things, these two groups of supernatural beings must unite to battle old foes dragged from their memories and made manifest once more.And along the way they may just discover that, even though they are from different worlds, their two groups aren't quite as different as they think.[Set between Seasons 6A and 6B of Teen Wolf, and the early part of Season 4 of The Originals]





	1. Home Invasion

The Mikaelson Compound was silent as the grave, which was ironic considering its usual occupants. But, like the beings that lived within, this was no ordinary silence.

A crystal blue dome encased a small area in the centre of the courtyard; within, the five Mikaelson siblings crowded together around Freya, whose arms were raised high above her head to maintain the protection spell that offered both safety from physical attack as well as a moment to catch their breath. 

They stood in a rough circle, glaring out at the faces of those who dared assault them in their own home. Klaus, dark veins pulsing around his eyes as his fangs extended, ready to pounce; Elijah, straight-backed and calm as always; Rebekah, stylish and deadly all at once, her long blonde hair splayed out in all directions; and Kol, licking his lips in anticipation of the violence to come. Each defiant in posture and enraged in expression, could hardly believe the coalition of forces they now faced. Arranged around them like the five points of a star, inexplicably, were some of the deadliest foes the Mikaelsons had ever faced. 

'As much as we enjoyed disposing of them all the first time,' Klaus sneered, 'would someone care to explain how these miscreants came to be back among the living?'

Tristan de Martel, preening as usual and looking eminently pleased with himself, smirked at the Original family as if he had never been drowned at all. To his left, the father of the Original clan, Mikael, bared his teeth at his wayward offspring but offered no explanation as to his resurrection. Dahlia, the Originals’ aunt and an immensely powerful witch, was equally as unforthcoming.

'I don’t think they feel like chatting,' Rebekah observed, her eyes darting from one foe to the next, waiting to see who was going to make the next move. Her gaze lingered on the form of Marcel Gerard, eyes dark and teeth bared - teeth whose bite could now kill an Original, thanks to the machinations of the thankfully absent Lucien Castle. 

'Marcel, what madness is this?' she asked. 'I know we’ve not seen eye to eye before, but we’ve done nothing to invoke your wrath this time!'

Kol flexed his fingers, waiting to spring, always eager to leap into battle. But facing him was the one person on Earth he could never bring himself to harm - Davina Claire, the witch he loved and had sacrificed so much to be with, until she had been brutally taken from him. And now here she was, opposing he and his family alongside this cadre of villains.

'Davina, what are you playing at? Talk to me, darling, please.' 

But Kol’s pleas were meet with even more stony silence.

'Five of them, five of us,' Elijah counted, cool-headed in the face of danger. The slight rumpling of his otherwise crisp dress shirt was the only sign that he had been fighting at all. 

'I believe we can all count, brother,' Freya answered. 'But in this case, I think you missed one.' She pointed her gaze under the archway that allowed entry and exit to the Compound and, sure enough, a dark shadow was present underneath. 

'I think we can all assume that whoever that is, they’re the one behind all this?' Klaus asked. 'So they’re the one that I need to kill first.'

The shape, as if it realized it was being addressed, stepped out of the darkness of the archway, coalescing into a vaguely humanoid shape. The outline of its body was in constant flux as grey-brown smoke seeped around it, and it's only distinguishing features were two piercing red eyes glaring out from its face, and a distended stomach that it clutched with two dark hands. It moved slowly, its body apparently weighing much more than its slight frame would suggest.

'That is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in awhile,' Rebekah noted. 'Is it poor form to punch a pregnant...whatever the hell that is?' 

'I’m sure we’ve all done worse in our time,' Kol added with a knowing smile. He knew that bloodshed was only a second away, and his own blood thrilled in his veins at the prospect. 

'Together, then,' Elijah instructed. 'Our other foes don’t seem to be going anywhere. We can address their change in allegiance and apparent resurrections once this...thing is disposed of.'

'Agreed,' Klaus replied. With his approval, the three vampires and their hybrid brother poised to spring.

'Wait!'

This was from Freya; the other Originals immediately halted, although the disappointment was etched into both Kol and Klaus’ faces. 

Klaus was the first to speak, steamrolling over Freya’s protests. 'Sister, our foe is revealed. We should strike now and be done with this!' 

'You can’t,' Freya cautioned back. 'I know what that thing is, and if you attack it you’ll only make it more powerful.'

That caused Klaus to pause, and the creature took the opportunity to shamble closer, one hand outstretched like a parched traveller finally sighting water in the desert.

'Explain yourself, before I lose what little patience I have left. If you think I’m going to let some bloated monstrosity invade our home, you’re sorely mistaken.'

'Long story short,' Freya began, her eyes fixed on the slowly approaching creature. 'It’s called The Glutton. It’s an ancient being from beyond our reality - it travels from dimension to dimension, gorging itself on magic. It seeks out the strongest magical beings and items it can find, drains them dry, and then moves onto another plane of existence.'

'And the miraculous appearance of our old foes?' Elijah asked, one eyebrow quirked as The Glutton dragged itself closer.

'The Glutton can tap into the residual magic of its prey, and summon forth those they fear most. It’s no coincidence that there’s five of us and five of them. There’s someone for each of us, and I think we can all work out who’s here for who.'

'So, these aren’t the real deal?' Rebekah asked, 'That’s not Marcel?'

'Or Davina?' Kol added, no small amount of hope in his voice.

'No, they’re simulacra; magical creations forged by our memories and The Glutton’s power. But they’re still deadly - they know everything that our foes knew, and have the same abilities. They’re not as strong as the real thing, but combined they’re still enough to take us all down.'

Relief washed over the two Originals - they had no desire to fight the ones they loved. They had spent too long doing that in the past to continue repeating the same battles again.

'I see a lot of problems, but you don’t seem to be offering solutions, sister. Sometime before that thing touches your shield, since I assume by your explanation that it will fail as soon as contact is made?' Klaus said.

'Yes. One touch and we’ll be vulnerable. There’s hardly any lore on The Glutton. Those that face it either die, or…'

'Or?' Elijah prompted.

Freya screwed up her face in concentration, casting her mind back across the numerous grimoires and grimmeries that she had read in her time both under Dahlia’s tutelage and, since her release, reading through the spellbooks that had belonged to their mother, Esther. 'There’s no known way to stop it. You either run-'

'Which is not an option,' Klaus interjected.

'- Or we give it a new target. A new source of magic, one even more powerful than four Originals together.'

'Is there such a thing? And, presuming that there is, what do you need to send it away?'

Freya glanced around the courtyard, avoiding the eyes of her aunt Dahlia, the woman she feared the most in the world. 'I need to get to my room. I can cobble together a locator spell to find somewhere to send it, and a banishing curse to do the deed, but I’ll need you to buy me time. Kol, I could use your help.'

'I’m not a witch any longer, what use am I?' the youngest Original asked. In contrast to Freya, he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the fake Davina. The fierceness in her eyes, the hatred that poured from them, was enough to make his heart break even knowing that she wasn’t real.

'You can watch my back. Besides, combining spells is difficult at the best of times, and under pressure I’m bound to make some mistakes. You can be my second pair of eyes. The rest of you will need to keep them busy. And whatever you do, don’t let The Glutton touch you.'

'Impossible odds, old foes at the gate, and a magic-draining monster to boot. Remind me why I come visit?' Rebekah asked. 

'Because you miss us, of course,' Elijah replied, managing a wry smile even in the face of danger. 

'I could do without all this next time though,' she said, gesturing to the room at large and the insurmountable odds they once again faced.

'Whatever you need, Freya. You can count on us.'

'Alright. On the count of three, I’ll drop the shield. Hold the line, and I’ll be as quick as I can.' 

The five Mikaelsons locked eyes, their purposes aligned. A shared thought seemed to dart between the group, unspoken. Who was this creature to come into their home, dredging up long-dead memories and giving them life once again? How dare it. It had dared too much, and now, it would pay the price.

*********

'Three!' Freya yelled, dropping her hands back to her sides. The blue dome fell as she did so, and thus the battle resumed.

She turned on her heel, vaguely aware of Kol at her side, and disappeared into the bowels of the Compound, zigging and zagging around corners as the sound of battle reached her ears.

'Are you sure this will work?' Kol asked, looking back over his shoulder to check if they were being pursued.

'No, but it’s the best plan we’ve got right now,' Freya replied.

'That’s more plan than we usually have, I suppose,' Kol conceded. 'There, up ahead.'

The pair hit the door running and it swung inwards, spilling the two of them inside like a waiter tripping over the carpet. Immediately Kol slammed the door behind them and Freya scrambled to her desk, pulling vials and tinctures towards her as she gathered the ingredients she needed.

'Now we just have to hope that Klaus and the others can keep The Glutton and it’s mimics at bay,' she sighed.

You don’t want deadly nightshade, by the way,' Kol said, pointing at the dark purple vial Freya held in one hand. 'Have faith, sister. If there’s one thing Nik’s good at, it’s making a mess. He’s even better than me, although I’d never admit that to his face,' he added with a rakish grin.

*********

'Three!'

The protection spell dissipated, and Klaus could hear the retreating feet of Kol and Freya as the last remnants of the blue dome faded from view. Instantly, their foes began to move. It was unnerving enough seeing these previously defeated opponents back in their home once again, but the fact that they were totally silent added to the ominous effect.

'Where are Hope and Hayley?' Elijah asked as Tristan de Martel sped across the room towards him. Dahlia strode purposefully to join hands with Davina, no doubt preparing some kind of spell that would surely doom them all.

The flailing body of Marcel collided with the two witches, and Rebekah dusted off her hands as the three landed in a heap. 'They’re visiting Mary in the bayou; perfectly safe until we’ve dealt with this lot.'

'Overconfidence is a luxury we cannot afford right now,' Klaus said, darting behind Rebekah and grasping his father around the wrists, tight enough to crush the bones and cause the stakes he held in both hands, poised to puncture his daughter’s heart, to clatter to the floor. Seeing the face of the man who had made him the monster he was today made Klaus’s blood boil, and he tore the man bodily to one side where he joined the two witches and the phantom of his adopted son in a heap on the floor.

Elijah and Tristan swapped blows in the centre of the courtyard, weaving and feinting in a whirlwind of supernaturally powered attacks. The Original vampire glared into his protegé’s eyes, and was disturbed by the perfection of the illusion. It was as if Tristan were here himself, and not trapped at the bottom of the ocean. But, if this were truly Tristan, he would never have been so silent. Gloating was built into the man’s DNA.

Suddenly, a chill gripped Elijah to his very soul. It began in the centre of his back, a feeling as if ice were being poured directly into his veins, coursing through his system like a poison and causing his entire body to seize up. 

Both Klaus and Rebekah called his name, but their voices were dimmed by the pounding of blood in Elijah’s ears. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the ethereal form of The Glutton, one hand resting on its stomach and the other lightly touching his back - the cause of his affliction.

Elijah had died before. Being an Original, it was a part of life. Very few things could kill an Original permanently, and so dying was mostly an inconvenience. As a result, he was very familiar with the feeling. This, however, felt different. It was as if his will to live was being sapped, as well as his ability to do so. As if it would just be easier to give himself over to the darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision, to get away from it all. All of the drama, the constant fighting, never knowing peace…

An exclamation cracked through Elijah’s consciousness like a bullet from a gun, snapping his eyes wide open, a sharp intake of breath fighting its way into his lungs.

'Get away from our brother!'

A blast of magical wind burst through the courtyard, striking The Glutton squarely in the chest, just above its bulbous stomach. It barely staggered, but it produced the needed effect - the contact was broken. Elijah tumbled forward, caught by a speeding Kol and pulled across the room to stand with Klaus, Rebekah, and the newly returned Freya. As soon as The Glutton’s hand was removed, Elijah felt his strength beginning to return.

Their phantom foes grouped around The Glutton, dusting themselves off from the floor. Freya, her family arrayed behind her like wings, raised her hand and began chanting in an arcane language none of her siblings had heard before.

'Sounds like Sumerian, but I’m a little rusty,' Kol observed. Rebekah shrugged, her eyes fixed on their enemies as the supernatural wind Freya had summoned to rescue Elijah kicked up again. This time, it spun around the courtyard, a miniature tornado that picked up speed and tore at the clothes of the Originals and their enemies alike.

The Glutton stumbled again, and it was propped up from behind by Mikael and Tristan. From the vicinity of where its mouth should have been, an otherworldy scream echoed out across the Compound as it realised that it had targeted foes it could never hope to defeat.

'It’s a little windy, Freya, but I don’t think this is helping,' Klaus scolded, but his older sister simply frowned and began the final stage of her chanting. The wind tore through the room even faster and, as it did so, the air shimmered and split as if a hunter’s knife had pierced the very fabric of reality itself.

The tears formed a rough circle and, as it reached completion, the centre fell away to reveal a pulsating vortex of energy. The Glutton’s legs dropped out from under it as it fell away from its phantom protectors, sliding across the floor on its back like a turtle, unable to right itself because of its enormous stomach.

It reached the edge of the vortex and tumbled inside, powerless to stop itself from being engulfed by the waves of energy that roiled around like boiling water. Instantly, it's conjured villains disappeared in a shimmer of heat haze as if they were never there at all.

The Glutton’s scream stretched out to infinity, the wind blew one final gust, and then it was over. The portal vanished in a wink of light, and the leaves and other junk that usually littered the courtyard floor settled back down into their corners.

The Originals looked about them, still vigilant in case the threat wasn’t as vanquished as they thought. Too often had their enemies appeared defeated only to return once again, stronger than before. Luckily this time it had only been pale imitations, but it was always best to be overcautious as a Mikaelson.

'I think...it’s over?' Rebekah said, raking her fingers through her wind-swept hair and pulling a moulded stone chair upright to give herself somewhere to lean. 'In the grand scheme of enemies that we’ve faced before, pregnant magic siphon is pretty low on the list, don’t you think?'

'Why do we not throw more of our enemies into magical vortices and be done with them?' Elijah pondered aloud, but then caught sight of the weakened Freya.

'You try tearing holes in the walls of reality and see how good you feel afterwards,' she chided, dropping to the floor, totally drained. Klaus stepped towards her, placing one hand on her shoulder.

'Once again, your magic has saved this family. Thank you, Freya. Now, no one is to tell Hayley about this. And definitely not my daughter. Are we agreed?'

'Does anyone else get the feeling that this was too easy?' Kol asked. 'Or is it just because I didn’t get to eviscerate anyone and I feel cheated?'

As if the very gods themselves had heard him, the sky chose that second to burst with lightning, followed by an enormous clap of thunder. It instantly darkened like a video feed on fast forward, and rain lashed across the Compound and its inhabitants like tiny knives.

'Damn it Kol!' Rebekah yelled over the noise. 'You had to jinx it, didn’t you?'

'This is no natural rain,' Freya said, slightly unnecessarily. 'This is old magic!’ 

'Bah! This is ridiculous!' Klaus exclaimed, raising an arm over his eyes to see if there was a point to the magically induced storm. A lightning bolt struck the floor not six inches from his feet, and he jumped backwards.

'What are you trying to tell us? Speak to us, don’t drown us!' Freya yelled, pulling herself to her feet, leaning hard on her brothers for support.

Rebekah pointed at the spot where the lightning had struck. 'There!' 

The storm, as quickly as it had appeared, vanished like someone turning off a faucet to stop a bath overflowing. The sky cleared, the wind subsided to a light breeze; the only evidence that there had been a storm at all was the water collecting on the tiles of the Compound, and the message engraved into the floor. Freya moved towards it, and read the verse aloud.

_A creed inflicted without thought,_  
_To save yourselves you doom all others._  
_Unless you right the wrong you’ve wrought,_  
_Then this time all will tear asunder._

_Follow now your banished foe,_  
_Or on all magic shall it be gorged._  
_The bond of always and forever,_  
_With bands of black must now be forged._

'Oh good, it rhymes,' Klaus disparaged. 

‘This can only be-' Freya began, turning back to her siblings with a grave look on her face.

'If the next words out of your mouth are ‘The Ancestors’, I may hurt someone,' Elijah warned, but Freya continued regardless.

'It is the Ancestors. And they’re right,’ she said, the light of realization dawning in her eyes. ‘This is my fault!' 

‘What are you talking about? You saved us all, as they must have known you would,’ Klaus argued.

‘In my haste to save us from The Glutton, I’ve done something I shouldn’t have. My locator spell worked, but I think it must have worked too well - instead of just finding the strongest magical signature in our world, I must have sent that creature to another dimension entirely.’

‘And for those of us who don’t speak magic, this is a problem because?’ Rebekah questioned.

‘The Glutton only ever travels between dimensions on its own, searching for magic that can sustain it. The trip mostly uses up all of its accumulated power, so it’s more of a nuisance than anything else, never getting too strong. Since it’s almost entirely made of magical energy, it can’t be bound, and it can’t be destroyed, so it just shambles across worlds searching for sustenance. Most of the lore about The Glutton, like I mentioned, just has its victims fleeing until they get away.’

Freya paced backwards and forwards, reasoning out what she had inadvertently done. ‘Four Originals in one place must have been irresistible. I don’t think there’s anything more powerful, at least not that I’ve heard of. Instead, I must have pointed it to something enormously powerful in another dimension, that it could potentially drain to become strong enough to destroy everything - and it still has the power to find it because I used my own magic to open the portal.’

'But what the hell does it all mean? I had plans today, and this is all extremely inconvenient,’ Kol said sarcastically. ‘And what about that last bit - the ‘bands of black’?’

Freya looked even graver, and she blinked at her siblings in turn. 'I don’t know about that part, not yet. But I do know that it means we need to follow The Glutton. We have to go to the dimension I sent it to, and stop it from draining whatever magic I pointed it towards to draw it away from you all.'

'Or we could just leave that dimension to fend for itself. If the magic there is as strong as you say, then surely its own defenders will be powerful enough to defeat that hideous creature,' Elijah reasoned.

'Do you really want to leave that to chance? I sent it there, and now whatever magic it’s found is potentially going to give it enough power to threaten all possible worlds, including ours. And that means that we’ll all die, even if we do nothing. Have The Ancestors ever spoken to us so directly before?’

The four vampires glanced at each other - even in their long history with the city of New Orleans, none of them could remember a time like that. Freya meanwhile fixed them all with a stern glare. 

’I’m going. I can’t make you all come with me, but I could use all your help.'

Rebekah looked from Freya to a hesitant Kol, to an annoyed but resigned Klaus, and finally to the stone-faced Elijah. She sighed heavily, and then spoke for them all, a consensus reached without any words. 'If you need our help, Freya, then we’ll help you. It’s not every day we get to save all of existence now, is it?'


	2. Signs & Portents

Lydia sat alone in the library, staring at the textbook she didn’t need to read for the class that didn’t start for another few weeks, wondering why she was sitting there in the first place. The library was still open to students over summer vacation, but most teenagers had better things to do than spend it in the school library, especially seniors who had graduated and should by rights have had no reason to ever return to Beacon Hills High School.

And yet, here she was. Sitting alone, tapping her pencil on the side of her notepad to an irregular rhythm, staring down at the textbook, words swimming in and out of focus as she tried to find some information she didn’t already know. She sighed, pushing her hair out of her eyes and giving up. She stared around the empty room, reflecting on all of the chaos that had occurred here since it had been rebuilt.

Dread Doctors, a giant werewolf, Ghost Riders, a phantom train station...MIT’s library likely had a storied history, but it wasn’t going to be the same as the Beacon Hills High School library. Nothing would be the same after this summer.

The pencil continued to tap as Lydia stretched her neck, wondering if it was too early to call the rest of her friends and organize something more interesting to do. Although, considering how insane her life had been for the past few years, maybe she should enjoy the normalcy while she had the chance.

‘I need a hobby that doesn’t involve school or certain death,’ she mused out loud, tapping her finger on her chin along with her pencil on the notepad. Since the defeat of the Ghost Riders and rogue Nazi werewolf Garrett Douglas, Beacon Hills had been surprisingly quiet. Too quiet.

‘I also need to stop being so paranoid. And now I’m talking to myself. That’s just great.’ One more page of the textbook, and then she was going to go home. Or to see her friends. Or just anything other than sitting here alone, like some kind of weirdo. She did enough things to make her fit that criteria, she didn’t need to do any more.

As she lowered her head to stare at the pages however, something caught her eye. A flash of brown between the stacks, there and then gone. If she were anyone else, Lydia would have just ignored it. But she knew that almost nothing was as it appeared in this town, and absolutely nothing that happened to her was by chance. She shoved her chair back from the table, laying her pencil down again, and crept over to where she had seen the strange brown movement.

‘Hello? Is someone there?’ she asked, her voice quavering despite her resolve. ‘I’m warning you, you don’t want to mess with me anymore.’

She slunk through the library stacks, bookshelves rising either side of her, giving the illusion of being deep underground. At the end of an aisle, the flash of brown disappeared again. Determined to catch it this time, Lydia ran after it as fast as she could, heels clacking on the floor and echoing as she did so.

‘Hello? Do you need help?’

The brown...whatever it was disappeared around yet another corner, this one only seconds away from where Lydia had followed. She spun around it as fast as she could, assuming she’d finally see whatever the thing was as she did so, but the aisle was empty. Somehow, it had escaped her entirely.

‘Damn it,’ she swore under her breath. ‘Get a grip, girl. You’re so bored that you’re imagining things to make your life more complicated. It does that enough on its own, you don’t need to help it.’

She turned back around, intent on retracing her steps and retrieving her notes, and walked smack into the brown creature she had been tailing, bouncing off and landing on the ground. As she looked up, her eyes widened in terror.

The creature was made of brownish black smoke, seemingly incorporeal - but it must have been solid somewhere, since she had bounced off of it. It was human-shaped, roughly, and held two hands over an enormously swollen stomach, as if it was going to break the world record for longest term pregnancy.

Its eyes were two red gashes in the brown protrusion that was its head, and another gash ran horizontally across, a crude imitation of a mouth. This mouth opened, revealing a dark abyss within that Lydia felt herself drawn towards, as if she was going to rise from the floor against her will and disappear inside it forever.

The creature screamed, an unearthly noise like a soul being tortured in hell. Lydia opened her own mouth, whether instinctively or not, and echoed it with her own banshee scream. The pair stood transfixed, both screaming as loud as they could - Lydia’s ears began to bleed from the cacophony but she knew that, if she stopped, the creature would win and she would disappear into that gaping maw forever.

Her throat ached, her lips were dry, there was barely any air left in her lungs. Lydia could feel her scream weakening, while the creature continued to shriek without any change in pitch at all. She wasn’t going to win; this was how it all ended, after everything she’d been through. And she wouldn’t even know what it was that finally finished her off.

Lydia’s eyes snapped open and she gazed about the library. She was back in her seat, pencil tapping that same irregular rhythm it had been tapping before. She looked around for some sign of her attacker, that grotesque brown smoke monster, but saw nothing. The library was as still as the grave, and as empty as a school library should be in the middle of summer vacation.

She took a deep breath, trying to stabilize herself. It was a dream. Or a vision. Or a premonition. Whatever it was, it had been as vivid as hell. That creature’s scream would echo in her nightmares for the rest of her life. 

'I gotta get out of here,’ she whispered to herself. She needed to be around people, any people, so that she wasn’t trapped in her own head anymore. She shoved her useless MIT textbook into her bag and grabbed her notepad. 

As she placed the pad into her bag, Lydia felt the indentations in the paper. She drew it back out curiously and placed it onto the table once again. The top sheet of the pad was covered in writing - which was strange, since she hadn’t found anything worth noting down just yet. Instead, there were eight lines of verse, in her own handwriting, none of which made any sense:

_From across the veil new threats arrive,_  
_Some a mystery, some renewed._  
_The darkest hearts again will thrive,_  
_And see all worlds around them burn._

_But after foe come grudging friends,_  
_Despite misgivings, you must stand together._  
_The bands of black must intertwine,_  
_With those bonded always and forever._

‘Okay, it’s official. I really need to call Scott,’ Lydia said, storming out of the library with the notepad in one hand and her phone in the other, already group-texting her friends. What was that old saying, she wondered as she clambered into her car? Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

*********

‘Can we go one week without some kind of freaky monster thing turning up in town? God, and you guys wonder why I preferred life as a coyote. The worst I had to worry about was being shot at by stupid humans,’ Malia complained.

‘But life as a human has so many more perks,’ Stiles argued. ‘Candy. Sex. Movies. Not having to pee in the woods and worry about freezing to death in the winter.’

Malia shot him a scornful look, but didn’t rise to him. Getting into an argument with Stiles was like grabbing hold of silly string - you’d never get the result you wanted, eventually wonder why you’d done it in the first place, and he’d get the satisfaction of making you look ridiculous.

‘Look,’ Lydia continued, staring around Scott’s kitchen table at her assembled friends. One group-text had been all she needed to gather the pack together - maybe it wasn’t just her that was getting a little antsy with all their downtime. ‘I’d rather not have to deal with waking nightmares about brown smokey screaming things, but here we are. So are we going to do something about it, or not?’

Scott looked pensive, a furrow appearing between his eyes as he concentrated. To his left, Liam looked up at him expectantly. While the young beta knew that he would soon be in charge of protecting Beacon Hills once the seniors went off to college, he was still happy to defer to Scott while he was still in town. 

‘At least we got something concrete for a change,’ he said optimistically, pointing at the piece of note paper containing Lydia’s scribbled verses. ‘Usually it’s all cryptic and confusing, right up until it’s obvious.’

‘Yeah, remember the upside down tree, or the backwards 5?’ Stiles said, turning to Lydia with a huge grin on his face. ‘Eventually you’ll just write stuff like ‘Werewolf attack, 5pm, High school’ and save us all of this running around chasing our tails.’

‘Proverbial and otherwise,’ Malia added. Lydia just rolled her eyes at the pair of them.

‘So it looks like whatever’s coming isn’t here yet, at least. And while ‘brown screaming cloud’ isn’t much to go on, we can at least see what we can dig up first. I’ll swing by Deaton’s later and see if he has anything he can tell us,’ Scott said, taking charge. ‘Do the lines of the poem make any sense to anyone else?’

‘Well, it looks like we’re going to have help on this one - ‘grudging friends’, right?’ Liam asked, pointing at the line on the page. ‘So that makes a change too. Although by the sound of it, they’re not people that will want to help us.’

‘Maybe it’s more hunters? We’ve worked with the Argents before, they’re not always that happy to see us,’ Malia guessed. ‘Or Deucalion.’ Her face turned grave for a second. ‘Please not Theo. I’ve had enough Theo Raeken to last a lifetime.’

‘Maybe.’ Lydia said noncommittally, tilting her head to one side, thoughtful. ‘And if whatever this thing is is coming from across the veil, then that probably means it’s not from our world. Like the Ghost Riders. So we should probably check places where the walls are thin. Like-’

Stiles leapt to his feet. ‘Please don’t say the Nemeton,’ he interrupted.

‘-the Nemeton,’ Lydia finished, giving him a satisfied smile. Stiles’ own face fell, and he threw his hands up into the sky. 

‘I swear, I’m gunna burn that tree stump down and plant some daisies or something. Although they’d probably just turn into evil daisies. That’d be worse.’

Scott grinned, and nodded. ‘Lydia’s right. I say we check it out. If not the Nemeton, then the rift where the Ghost Riders came through. One of those has to be the right place.’

‘If I see one more train station, I’m tying you guys up and forcing you stay in Beacon Hills. You can do senior year again, you’re not leaving me here to deal with this kind of stuff on my own,’ Liam said, semi-jokingly. 

‘You’re not alone,’ Malia observed. ‘You’ve got Hayden, and Mason, and Corey.’

‘And if you get super-desperate, you can always ask Theo for help. Since he was so helpful last time,’ Stiles added.

‘I’m so not ready for all of this,’ Liam replied sadly, but Malia dismissed him.

‘Stop complaining. We’ve had to deal with a lot worse before. We had our turn. You can handle whatever comes next.’

‘But for now,’ Scott interrupted, using his authoritative alpha voice, ‘we’re all still here so we can all deal with this together. Like I said, I’ll swing by and see Deaton later. You guys hang tight for now, and then we’ll go out into the woods and stake out the Nemeton, see if anything weird happens.’

‘Do we have to go at night?’ Stiles complained. ‘You know that place is creepy as hell, going at night’ll just make it ten times more likely something will jump out and murder us all.’

‘You can always stay here if you want, and miss out on all the action,’ Lydia teased, grabbing her bag and the poem from the table. ‘I’m going back to the library, see if I can find out anything else about that creature or whoever might be coming to help us. Malia?’

‘Do you really think I’m spending any more time in that library after last year?’

‘Fair point. Stiles, then?’

‘Detective mode activated,’ Stiles quipped and followed her out of the room. ‘One last time. Besides, it’ll be good practise for the FBI.’

Malia followed them out, off to do whatever it was she did to fill her time these days, leaving Liam and Scott alone in the kitchen. Liam looked up at Scott, curiosity in his eyes.

‘Do you really think I can do all this when you’re gone? You always seem so in control, like you know what you’re doing.’

At this, Scott laughed. ‘Have you paid any attention to me over the last few years? I have like zero clue what I’m doing a hundred percent of the time. If I can make it, you can. And even if we’re out of town, that doesn’t mean we won’t come back if you need help. We’re a pack, no matter how far apart we get.’

Liam smiled, but worry still creased his young face. Scott clapped him on the shoulder for reassurance. ‘You wanna come see Deaton with me? Or do you and Hayden have plans?’

‘Nah,’ Liam said, shaking his head. ‘She’s working tonight, and Mason’s blown off video game night again for a date with Corey. I’ll call them if we need them. So I guess for now I’m all yours.’

*********

A crescent moon rose above the trees as the pack trudged through Beacon Hills woods towards the Nemeton. Since the battle against the Beast and the Dread Doctors the spooky tree stump had been much easier to find, as if it realized that hiding away made it more difficult for its protectors to do their job.

‘So Deaton didn’t know anything at all?’ Malia asked, surefooted on the uneven ground from all of her time as a coyote. Next to her, Stiles fell over for the second time in ten minutes and pulled himself upright, covered in leaves and scowling.

‘I hate these woods. I will be so glad when I never have to see these woods again,’ he muttered, dusting the leaves off of his baseball bat.

Scott suppressed a smile, and shook his head. ‘He said he’d look into it, but it didn’t ring any bells. Whatever this thing is, it’s not well documented. Maybe it’s something new.’

‘Great. Just great. You guys are going to leave me a big book with all the possible supernatural things that we’ll have to deal with when you leave, right?’ Liam said, rolling his eyes. ‘Mason can commit it all to memory.’

‘We’re here,’ said Lydia. The five of them rounded a copse of trees and sure enough, the Nemeton rose out of the ground ahead of them. The tree stump was as quiet and unassuming as usual, but there was always a sense of foreboding in the air around it, as if the very woods themselves were telling you that you shouldn’t be there.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary, let’s go home,’ Stiles said quickly, turning around to leave. Malia grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and pulled him back, even as he sputtered protests.

‘He’s not wrong,’ said Scott. He looked around the clearing and saw nothing out of place. The leaves coated the wood floor as usual, the Nemeton itself was the same large tree stump. He closed his eyes and looked again with his werewolf senses, eyes blazing red as he did so. And then, he saw it.

‘Liam, Malia, look.’ He pointed just above the Nemeton, and the pair mirrored him, closing their eyes and opening them again to activate their supernatural sight, pale yellow and ice blue eyes staring out respectively.

‘Care to fill in the human? All I see is that stupid tree,’ Stiles pouted. Lydia slipped her hand into his absently, which seemed to calm him down. He stopped fidgeting, and concentrated on her touch. 

‘Something’s off. I can’t explain it, but it feels...wrong. Even more wrong than this place usually feels,’ she whispered.

‘There’s some kind of...tear in the air,’ Scott explained, pointing at the space above the Nemeton. ‘Can you guys see it?’

‘It’s like a crack that’s sealed over. Is that usually there?’ Liam asked.

‘We’ve all been here more than once,’ Malia reasoned, ‘and it’s never been there before.’ 

‘If it’s there now, then something made it. Something already came through. That thing I saw could be here already, loose somewhere in Beacon Hills,’ Lydia said, gripping Stiles’ hand tighter as she realized the implications.

‘And there’s no sign of it,’ Scott said, scanning the rest of the area with his werewolf vision. ‘There are no tracks, or scents, nothing we can follow.’

‘So now what?’ Liam said. ‘We’re at a dead end.’

‘Uh, guys?’ This was Malia, who was still staring transfixed at the crack above the Nemeton. ‘Is it meant to do that?’

‘Do what? What’s it doing?’ Stiles asked quickly, eyes darting left and right as if doing so would let him see what he was missing. He spun the baseball bat around in his hand, raising it above his head just in case.

‘It’s opening!’

It was true. The crack in the air had begun to glow brightly, a sickening yellow that spoke of sulphur and infection. The glow intensified until it was a searing white and then the crack rent open, leaving a hole in the very fabric of reality, a swirling vortex of multi-coloured energy that roiled and shifted in the air like some kind of otherworldly sea.

‘Okay, now I can see it,’ Stiles said redundantly, now wishing he couldn’t as much as he previously wished that he could.

Scott, Liam, and Malia shifted to their werewolf forms, ready to attack whatever came through the vortex. Their claws glinted, and Scott roared a battle cry into the night, a deep, guttural roar that reverberated across the empty clearing. Lydia released Stiles’ hand, inhaling a deep breath, ready to scream.

Then there was a flash, and the portal was gone. Instead, standing atop the Nemeton stood five people. Well, four were standing, while the fifth was leaning heavily on the others.

‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not do any more interdimensional traveling today,’ she said.

‘Well, well,’ said another. He spoke with a British accent, and his eyes glittered as if everything he looked at was his or, if it wasn’t, it would be soon. He had dirty blonde hair, and asserted himself as the leader just from the way he stood. ‘This dimension has little werewolves in it. How quaint. I don’t like how that one’s looking at me, though,’ he mused, pointing at the defiant glare that Malia was aiming at the newcomers. ‘Maybe I should kill it. I’ve never killed something from another dimension before.’

‘Scott, wait,’ Lydia warned. ‘None of these people are the-’

But it was too late. Malia growled at the threat and leapt at the Nemeton, claws flashing as she did so, but she caught nothing but air. Where the five had stood, there was no one to be seen. Instead, they had scattered across the clearing, moving at superhuman speed.

‘So, they’re not human either,’ Liam guessed. ‘No one human can move that fast.’

‘Or rip holes in the air,’ Stiles said. ‘They were saying something about other dimensions - looks like these guys are-’

‘Are you really going to challenge us?’ one of the travelers called, cutting Stiles off. He wore a suit, and held himself with a businesslike air even in the middle of a forest. He seemed almost bored, and determined to end this as soon as possible. ‘You have no idea what you’re getting yourselves into, children.’

‘Let’s play with them for a while,’ said one of the younger ones, a man in his mid-to-late twenties with dark hair and a devious look in his eyes. Eyes which seemed to darken, even in the limited light, veins pulsing underneath them as he snarled to reveal sharp fangs.

‘Wait a minute, please tell me those aren’t what I think they are,’ Stiles said, ‘because my bat’s not built for staking vampires.’

‘You wouldn’t get very far, even if you did,’ the only young woman that hadn’t spoken yet responded. She was beautiful, Stiles though, with bright blonde hair and lips that would look attractive whether they were smiling, pouting or kissing. ‘You clearly don’t know who you’re dealing with.’

‘I doubt our reputation, dark and storied as it is, extends beyond the walls of our own dimension,’ the leader said. ‘Now, children, are you going to growl and posture, or are we going to fight?’

‘Are you really going to kill children, Niklaus?’ the weakened one, who was leaning up against a tree and seemed totally out of breath, asked. She was tall and willowy, and while she seemed to be the oldest, still deferred to the younger members of the group.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ he replied. He too snarled, eyes darkening and fangs springing into place. Then he was a blur, and the battle began.


	3. Like A Bad Comic Book Plot

‘Oh, this is ridiculous! There’s no need for us to fight!’ Lydia shouted, but it was too late. The four vampires, if that was indeed what they were, launched themselves into the fight faster than she could see them, leaving kicked up trails of leaves in their wake as the only sign of movement.

Across the clearing, Freya mirrored her despondence. Trust her pigheaded brother to pick a fight with the first supernatural creatures he sees, when there was a much bigger threat to deal with that already had a day’s head-start. It had taken her that long to gather the energy needed to reopen the dimensional vortex and transport them here, and now they were wasting time on petty squabbles with children.

But she was far too exhausted to do anything about it. She sunk down next to the tree she was leaning against and placed her head between her knees, breathing heavily and wishing that someone had some common sense.

Klaus, sensing that the teenager with the slightly off-centre jawline and the glowing red eyes was the leader of this band of misfits, chose him as his target. He darted in front of the boy, slamming his hand into his chest and knocking him clean across the clearing.

‘Red eyes. I’ve never seen a werewolf with red eyes,’ he mused as the boy picked himself up and gnashed his fangs in response. The defiance in those eyes reminded Klaus of Marcel, when he was a child, long before the events that lead to their current state of affairs. But no matter - this boy was in his way, and he had better things to be doing. He had to end this quickly.

The almost-feral female that had attacked Klaus to begin with meanwhile sprung up and over the others, using the tree stump as a springboard to launch herself at Elijah. He looked up at her with a bored expression and didn’t even bother to move as she collided with him, knocking them both to the floor. She straddled the older man and growled, coyote fangs crowding her mouth as she socked him in the jaw.

‘When you’re quite finished,’ Elijah said lazily, twisting his body viciously to the side and catapulting her off of him and into a pile of leaves. He sped across and delivered another vicious kick to the ribs for good measure.

‘Are you not enjoying yourself, Elijah?’ Kol called, ducking under a blow from the littlest werewolf and laughing with delight. This was what he enjoyed the most - the thrill of battle, the chance to enjoy being one of the most deadly creatures on this or any world. Being an Original vampire may have stolen his magic, but Kol had learned to enjoy the other perks his status bestowed.

The little werewolf howled, his entire body vibrating with rage as he did so before renewing the attack. Kol slid to the side, dodging blow after blow and laughing. This only infuriated the little werewolf further, and so it continued.

‘Kol, don’t play with your food,’ Rebekah said. She seemed to have drawn the short straw, and was faced with a simple human holding an aluminum baseball bat. The child seemed to be unsure of whether he should attack or speak - neither of which Rebekah would have preferred.

‘Uh, are we going to fight, or…?’ the skinny teenager asked, a quizzical look on his face. Rebekah regarded him with a scathing one in return.

‘You can see how well that’s going for your friends. How about you just put the bat down, and I won’t stick it somewhere unpleasant?’ The teenager gulped and backed away slowly. Rebekah picked her nails absently as he retreated.

While the battle raged, Lydia crept around the edges of the fray, moving from tree to tree as she dodged vampires and members of her own pack alike. Eventually, she reached the fallen member of the newcomers’ group, who looked like she was sleeping off a bad hangover.

‘Hi,’ Lydia said uncertainly, and the woman raised her head, blinking rapidly to clear the fatigue.

‘If you’re here to fight me, I give up. I really just need a nap,’ she said. ‘You win, go fight one of my brothers instead.’

‘I don’t want to fight at all,’ Lydia said hurriedly. ‘I don’t think we should be fighting, I think we’re meant to be helping each other. Look!’ She pulled the piece of notepad paper out from her back pocket and thrust it under the woman’s nose, the flashlight of her cell phone illuminating the words.

The woman’s eyes darted left and right as she took in the verse. ‘This is the same rhyme scheme as The Ancestor’s message,’ she said, although this meant nothing to Lydia. ‘And it mentions the bands of black, and always and forever…’

Realization dawned, and the woman tried to get to her feet. Lydia reached down to help her, and together they managed to prop her up against the tree.

‘Klaus! Stop this! These people aren’t our enemies!’ Freya shouted, but the fighting showed no sign of subsiding. 

Lydia joined in, calling to the members of her pack. ‘Scott! This is wrong, we’re not meant to fight these people!’

‘I don’t think they’re listening,’ Rebekah observed as she sidled up, Stiles creeping behind her with his bat still raised. ‘If you hit me in the back of the head, I swear to you I will not be responsible for my actions.’

Stiles gave this a second’s thought, then lowered the bat. ‘Pretty lady has a point.’

‘What was that?’ both Lydia and Rebekah asked simultaneously, and Stiles gulped.

‘Elijah! Kol! Please, you have to stop this!’ Freya continued, but her brothers continued their assault on their opponents.

Stiles sidestepped around Rebekah to Lydia’s side. ‘Hey, I know a way to stop them,’ he said, nodding at Lydia herself.

‘I’m not a supernatural dog whistle,’ she sighed, but she knew what he was getting at. She took a deep breath, and screamed.

The sound pierced through the clearing, bouncing off the trees and back on itself, amplifying as it went until it became almost a physical force that broke apart the warring supernatural creatures, like a mother separating brawling children.

‘Finally!’ Lydia said, ‘I don’t know who you all are, but there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t think we’re meant to be fighting each other at all.’

‘She’s right,’ Freya added, brandishing the notepad paper. ‘They received a prophecy, just as we did. They’re here to help, not get in our way.’

‘This one attacked us first,’ Elijah stated, pointing at Malia.

‘You said you were going to kill us, was I just supposed to stand there and let you?’ she asked.

‘If we wanted to kill you, we would have already,’ Klaus said. ‘But I do enjoy a good brawl every now and then.’

‘I swear, this is like some bad comic book plot,’ Stiles added under his breath, and Lydia elbowed him in the ribs.

‘If you’re really here to help us, who are you? Why are you in Beacon Hills?’ Lydia asked them all.

Freya, still exhausted from all of her exertions both magical and physical, leaned sideways once more. Lydia took her by the arm and lead her to the Nemeton, where she sat on the edge of the mystical stump and instantly felt stronger.

‘I believe some explanations are in order,’ Klaus stated, but then added, reluctantly, ‘from both sides, I suppose.’

*********

‘So, let me get this straight,’ Stiles said, looking around the group of vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures that he’d managed to find his entire life revolving around. ‘You guys aren’t just vampires, you’re the first vampires in your world.’

‘That is correct,’ Elijah confirmed for him with a nod. ‘Although our sister Freya is a witch, our brother Kol was a witch before he became a vampire, and Niklaus is actually a hybrid - he is both a vampire, and a werewolf.’

‘Aren’t you all a bit greedy?’ Malia asked, to which Klaus grinned.

‘Let it never be said that a Mikaelson is ever satisfied.’

‘Meanwhile,’ Rebekah interjected, ‘we’ve got a banshee with great hair, a tiny, angry werewolf, a werecoyote who needs to floss more, a True Alpha which is basically just a werewolf with red contacts, and a...whatever you’re meant to be,’ she pointed at each of the McCall pack in turn.

‘Stiles. I’m a Stiles. Or just Stiles. Call me whatever you want,’ Stiles said, jaw hanging slightly open. Lydia elbowed him in the ribs again, and he looked shocked. ‘What? What’d I do?’

‘That’s us, more or less,’ Scott conceded. Liam seemed to be taking offense at being called both tiny and angry, then realised that he was proving them right and tried to look less offended. His face didn’t quite get the message that his brain was sending, however, and he grimaced.

Freya moved slightly, repositioning herself atop the Nemeton. It’s magic was rejuvenating her by the second - she almost felt normal. Or as normal as one could feel after tearing not one but two holes in the fabric of reality in one day. ‘Now that we’ve all gotten to know each other, maybe we can focus on The Glutton - you know, the real reason we’re all together?’

‘You mean the monster that you couldn’t handle, so you tossed into our world like trash and expected us to deal with it for you?’ Malia snapped.

‘We made an error, and we apologise. And we will do everything in our power to rectify it,’ Elijah replied. ‘And if these prophecies that both of our groups have received are to be believed, the only way to stop this creature is to work together.’

‘’The bands of black must intertwine, with those bonded always and forever’,’ Kol recited. ‘Always and forever is the Mikaelson family motto - what are these bands then? Maybe that’s where we need to start. We need to unite with whatever they refer to.’

‘I think it’s...us,’ Scott said, rolling up his sleeve to reveal the thick black bands tattooed around his upper arm. ‘This was something I had done as a symbol, but it’s kind of come to represent our pack. Your motto, and our symbol, together. I think that’s what those prophecies are getting at. Like Freya said, the only way we can stop this thing is to work together, even if we don’t want to.’

‘I’d much rather just beat them all up again,’ Liam admitted, and Malia nodded. 

Kol flashed his fangs in Liam’s direction. ‘You weren’t doing much in the way of beating up, little boy. If I remember, I had you on the ropes.’

Liam rose to the jibe, gritting his teeth. ‘Oh yeah? How about round two, and I’ll show you what a werewolf can really do!’

‘Children, please. We’ve got enough problems without in-fighting. Now knock it off,’ Rebekah said, her voice like a resigned parent. She remembered her own mother’s exasperated tone, and resolved never to use it again. 

It was successful, however. Both Kol and Liam backed down, although they both shot the other foul glances for good measure.

Klaus, tired of not being the centre of attention, got to his feet. ‘So, this is your world. Freya sent The Glutton here because it’s full of magic - strong magic. So where would we start to look for it?’

Before any of the McCall pack could reply, a very familiar screeching cut through the darkness of the night, seeming to come from all directions at once. 

‘I don’t think we’re going to have to answer that,’ Stiles said redundantly, and raised his bat above his head once more.

*********

‘Are you really telling me that a family of vampires and a pack of supernatural teenagers are not enough to defeat one screaming cloud?’ Elijah asked, head on a pivot as he looked around for the creature. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, and it was difficult to pinpoint where the first attack would come from.

‘In all the lore I’ve read, The Glutton can’t be killed. It can’t be banished, it can’t be destroyed. All you can do is run,’ Freya reiterated.

‘Or throw it at someone else and hope they don’t mind dying for you,’ Malia said tersely.

‘You’re going to need to let that go, if we’re to work together,’ Klaus told her, but even he was beginning to regret that their actions had lead to this. Stuck in a foreign land, with supposed allies who looked barely old enough to shave, and who were apparently their only hope to stop this thing before it destroyed everything.

Liam stood beside Scott, claws out and ready to strike. ‘Is there anything else you need to tell us about this thing? We know it screams, that’s kind of it.’

‘Don’t let it touch you,’ Kol informed him. ‘It touched Elijah for a second and nearly killed him - who knows what it’ll do to those less powerful than an Original vampire.’

At that moment, the trees around the Nemeton began to rustle, and out of the darkness strode a group of equal size to the combined might of the Mikaelsons and the McCall pack. Each was grinning at their luck; the chance to face off against their most hated enemies once again was delicious.

‘Oh, and there’s the fact that it can create phantoms of all of your most terrible foes to fight you. We probably should have lead with that,’ Rebekah admitted sheepishly. 

‘Wait, what?’ Stiles asked, then felt his jaw drop as their enemies were revealed, stepping into the light of the moon.

Surrounding their group were the five villains that the Mikaelsons had faced in their own dimension - dark reflections of Marcel and Davina, accompanied by Mikael, Dahlia, and Tristan de Martel. 

And they were now joined by old enemies of the pack - Corinne, also known as the Desert Wolf, a deadly werecoyote assassin and Malia’s mother; Jennifer Blake, flickering between her beautiful English teacher and scarred dark druid forms; a warped version of Stiles himself, still possessed by the dark kitsune spirit known as a Nogitsune; Kate Argent, Allison’s aunt and both a deadly hunter and werejaguar; and the enormous, smoky form of the Beast Of Gevaudan, a horrendous serial killing werewolf that had possessed the body of Liam’s best friend Mason.

‘Are these...real?’ Lydia asked, but she already knew as soon as the question left her lips that they couldn’t be. There was no way the Beast was real, the Darach was alive, that the Nogitsune was back again. 

‘They’re cheap imitations - designed to scare us into submission more than fight,’ Freya acknowledged. ‘But that doesn’t mean they’re to be taken lightly. Just be thankful that they can’t speak.’

‘Oh, can we not?’ Dahlia asked, and Freya froze at the sound of the older woman’s voice. A voice that had haunted her nightmares for years; a voice she thought she was finally free of. ‘I believe you’ve been grossly misinformed, Freya. While we may be imitations…’

‘...the magic of this dimension has fed our master. We’re stronger than we were before, and getting more powerful by the second. We know all your secrets. All the worries and fears that keep you up at night,’ the Nogitsune continued, gesturing widely with its arms, it’s dark eyes glaring out hungrily.

‘We can use all of that against you. We know how to make you hurt,’ Tristan added, relishing the thought.

‘And there’s no silly attachments around to hold us back,’ the Desert Wolf finished for them, glancing at Malia. ‘We’re here for one reason, and one reason only - to rip you limb from limb, so that The Glutton can feast on your magic.’

‘Okay, what do we do now? Because this just got about ten times worse than we bargained for,’ Rebekah said hurriedly. ‘They’re closing in, and as strong as we all are, I don’t think we can win a ten-way battle all at once.’

‘Scott? What do we do?’ Liam asked as dark smoke enveloped the Beast, revealing the form of Sebastien Valet marching towards him, murder in his eyes.

‘Rebekah’s right - I think there’s only one thing we can do,’ Scott replied.

‘Much as it loathes me to agree with him, the alpha is correct,’ Klaus conceded. ‘A strategic retreat is in order. I assume you have somewhere in mind, McCall?’

Scott glanced back at the vampire and nodded sharply. ‘Follow me. Everyone stay close!’

As the assembled villains closed in, Scott drew back his head and roared as loudly as he could. His eyes blazed crimson, and the power of a True Alpha backed every decibel that emanated from his mouth. It was enough to give them pause, and Scott seized the opportunity.

‘Let’s go!’ he shouted, and elbowed past Kate Argent, knocking her to the floor. He heard the sound of the others stomping along behind him, and another high pitched shriek from The Glutton, wherever it was.

‘You can retreat for now, Scott, but you’ll soon come running! If you leave us to our own devices, there’s no telling how many people we can kill! The Glutton will feast, and there’ll be no one around to stop it!’ Kate called from the floor of the forest, but Scott did his best to ignore her.

He concentrated on the sound of his feet hitting the ground, the sound of his friends and new allies running alongside him as they headed back to where Stiles had parked his Jeep. They needed to regroup and plan - they only way they were all going to survive this night was to work together, and with no idea what any of the Mikaelson’s strengths and weaknesses were, that would be even more difficult than he imagined.

But he also knew that he couldn’t let all of those monsters roam free, even if they weren’t real. He and his friends had defeated them all separately before, and no doubt the Mikaelsons had done the same with their own enemies - so they only had to do what they had done before, again. But could it be that easy? And even if it were, what was stopping The Glutton summoning someone or something even more powerful straight after? All these questions and more had to be answered before they could continue.

Their greatest foes had assembled against them, alongside monsters from a parallel reality. This was going to be the greatest test that the pack had ever faced - and as the pack piled into Stiles’ Jeep, the Mikaelsons running alongside it at speed, Scott could only look out at the dark woods and wonder how they were going to get save not just their town, but their entire world from destruction this time.


	4. Uneasy Alliance

‘So, this is all bullcrap, right?’ Stiles asked, gunning the engine of his Jeep as the pack sped away from the Nemeton and out through Beacon Hills woods. He looked across at Scott in the passenger seat, and glanced into the rear view mirror to see Lydia, Malia, and Liam all crammed in together. There were indistinct flickers of movement on the road indicating the movements of the Mikaelsons as they followed.

Scott shrugged. ‘After all we’ve been through, I think we should at least give these guys a chance. If the choice is between them or things that look like people we’ve had to fight before, then I think it’s pretty clear who we’re supposed to trust.’

‘We all heard their side of the prophecy, too. It’s definitely not a coincidence that they’re here. And they’re definitely the ‘always and forever’ that ours referred to. I think for once the stakes are high enough that the powers that be are actually pointing us in the right direction,’ Lydia reasoned. ‘And while I get the feeling that they’re not exactly on the side of the angels, they are here to help us.’

‘I usually trust your banshee mojo, but you’ll have to forgive me for being more than a little sceptical. They’re vampires. When have you ever heard anything about good vampires?’ Stiles argued.

‘When have you ever heard of any good werewolves?’ Scott countered. 

‘Not all monsters do monstrous things,’ Liam recited, a grin on his face at being able to correct Stiles. ‘If Scott trusts them, then so do I. Except Kol. He’s a douche.’

‘He probably thinks you are too,’ Malia said, and Liam rolled his eyes. ‘You guys know that I’m the last person to trust anyone. And I don’t trust these guys. But I do think they’ll do what they need to do to stop this thing. The chemo signals coming off of them, Freya especially, were like...guilt. Even Klaus, who I get the feeling never feels guilty about anything, he smelt like someone who was feeling bad, even if he didn’t show it.’

‘The nose knows,’ Stiles joked. He drummed the steering wheel with his fingers, then seemed to come to a conclusion. ‘Okay, if Scott says yes, and Malia’s nose says yes, and Lydia’s super banshee powers say yes, and even Liam says yes-’

'Hey!’

‘-then I guess I’ll go along with it for now. But I still think we should stop off at the store and grab as much garlic as we can find.’

Scott chuckled, and shook his head. ‘Something tells me that they wouldn’t appreciate that. Turn left here, we’re nearly there.’

*********

‘A vet? The little werewolf pack holes up in a vet? There’s some kind of irony there, somewhere,’ Rebekah said. The pack’s Jeep was sitting in the parking lot, having divested its passengers who were now inside and waiting for the Mikaelsons to join them.

‘Sister, are you well? I know moving at that speed for that amount of time can be quite disconcerting if you’re not used to it,’ Klaus asked. Freya, bent over double, raised one finger as she vomited into a nearby bush.

'Does that answer your question?’ she replied, wiping her mouth.

‘Perfectly. Now, I assume we’re all agreed that this band of miscreants are a means to an end, and nothing more, correct?’

Elijah straightened his jacket and clenched his jaw in thought. ‘I feel as though our usual tactic of betraying those that wish to help us might not be the best move this time, Niklaus. They may be children, but they acquitted themselves well in battle, even against foes much stronger and faster than they are. Namely us.’

Rebekah nodded, passing Freya a tissue. ‘They’re kids, Nik. The little one probably hasn’t even found a chest hair yet. If, for some god forsaken reason, they’re the ones we’re meant to work with to stop this thing, I think we need to do it.’

‘I know my opinion isn’t really one you look for, but there’s more to them than meets the eye. Even the human, there’s something dark there. Didn’t you see his doppelganger with the others? ‘ Kol added, casting a cursory glance back at the vet in case the werewolves could hear him. ‘And as for the little one, he’s fiery. In another life, we might have been friends. I don’t think we should trust them as far as we can throw them, which would admittedly be pretty far, but Beks is right, and Elijah too. We’re being forced together, so maybe we should put the old Mikaelson pride to one side for a change.’

Freya stretched, one hand on her stomach. ‘By the goddess, never again,’ she whispered to herself, feeling as if she’d tied her own intestines in a knot. ‘We made this mess. This is our fault. We’re here now - we should take any help we can get. I’m not about to turn down local knowledge, or supernatural back-up. And besides, The Ancestors mentioned them.’

'And they’re always so trustworthy,’ Klaus said, scorn in his voice. ‘Those old ghosts have caused us more problems than they’re worth. Maybe they’ve sent us on this wild goose chase to finally get us out of New Orleans once and for all, did any of you think of that?’

Rebekah threw up her hands in anger. ‘Nik, you are the most bullheaded-’

‘No, Rebekah, he is correct,’ Elijah cut across. ‘Caution is advised, I think. We did not get to be as old as we are without being careful. Trust, but verify, as the saying goes.’

At that moment, Liam poked his head out of the back door of the vet and called, ‘Do you guys need to be invited in or something? Come on!’

‘Trust, but verify,’ Elijah repeated as the five Mikaelsons exchanged one final glance and entered the building.

*********

Doctor Deaton’s veterinary surgery had had some odd visitors in its time, and more than its fair share of dead bodies. But the assembled cadre of supernatural creatures (and one human) that now crowded into his operating theatre was taking things to the extreme. Thankfully, Deaton himself had gone home long before then, hoping to track down some information on the screaming creature that Scott and Liam had told him about, and wasn’t around to wonder why there were vampires, hybrids, witches and ex-witches in his practise.

‘We can’t stay here too long,’ Scott warned. ‘You heard what Kate said - we have to get out there and stop them, before they hurt somebody.’

Klaus peered around the dingy theatre, wondering how this had become his life. He wasn’t a good person, he knew that much, but there were certain levels of comfort he was used to being afforded and being shoved into an animal clinic was not what he had expected when he woke up this morning. 

‘Agreed; we don’t have time for this. We need to get out there, find this Glutton creature and put an end to it; once it is dead, all of those phantoms will likely disperse. Ten birds with one stone, so to speak.’

‘And while we’re out there searching for something that we have no idea how to track, they could be killing people. People we care about! This may not be your world, but we don’t just throw people to the wolves while we’re doing something else,’ Scott replied insistently. ‘There’s already been too many deaths in Beacon Hills. We have to do everything we can to protect everyone else.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Klaus argued, ‘with all of us together and your knowledge of this place, we’ll find the creature in no time. Or, even quicker, Freya, can’t you do a tracking spell?’

The eldest Mikaelson shook her head sadly. ‘The Glutton isn’t like a real being. It draws its power from the energy it absorbs, so it doesn’t have a distinct signature to track. We’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.’

‘I have a better idea,’ Stiles interjected. Seeing the Nogitsune, his own face staring back at him with hatred on every line of its face, his face, had put him on edge. He tapped his baseball bat nervously on the base of his shoe as he spoke. ‘How about you guys go find this thing, and take it back to your world where it came from?’

‘Or, we could feed you and your friends to it, while we think of a way to kill it for good,’ Kol suggested, glaring at the gangly teenager.

‘Third option, I could kick your a-’ Liam began, but Scott silenced him with a look.

‘No,’ the alpha said. ‘This is our world. We do this our way. You came here looking for our help, and we have to work together, even if we don’t want to. Besides, we’ve already worked out that we have no way of finding this thing. The next best thing would be to track down the monsters we do know about, and see if they can point us in the right direction.’

‘I admire your optimism, if not your naivety,’ Elijah said pointedly. ‘But the fact of the matter is, the child is right.’

‘You can’t be serious, Elijah,’ Rebekah said. ‘This isn’t how we do things. We’re not deferring to a child, we’re hundreds of years old. We know how to deal with these things on our own.’

‘Be that as it may, this is not our world. And this is, for lack of a more polite way to phrase it, our fault. Our hubris has placed this world, and all worlds, in peril. Our way got us into this mess - perhaps Mr McCall here can get us out of it.’

‘I agree with Elijah,’ Freya added. Her contact with the Nemeton had made her feel much better, although the magic of this world felt different to her. She could feel it all around her, but it had a different flavour, like drinking water from another part of the world. It was familiar, but nowhere near the same. ‘We can’t just rush out there without a plan. And our earlier plan resulted in the current state of affairs.’

Lydia was staring out of the window, the dark clouds in the sky mirroring those filling her thoughts. ‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ she whispered. Her words may have been quiet, but they were effective. All of the other occupants of the room turned towards her as she continued, ‘I can feel it. Those monsters are out there, and we have to do something to stop them. Or people are going to die. Lots, and lots of people.’

‘Can you pinpoint them, so we know where to go?’ Malia asked. She was on edge around strangers at the best of times, but these Original vampires or whatever they were did not sit well with her at all. She was trying to keep them all in her eye line at once, but there were too many of them and the room was too narrow, so she couldn’t seem to settle.

‘I can feel them out there, but I’m not a compass, Malia,’ Lydia reminded her. Her powers were vague, but her control over them was getting better the more she used them. Stiles may have made a joke earlier, but one day Lydia hoped to be able to do more than just write cryptic messages and try to solve them in time to save lives. ‘But I think we’ll find them easier than we think.’

‘How do you mean?’ Scott asked.

‘Is she always this confounding?’ Klaus added impatiently. He had no time for all of this nonsense. He wanted to tear someone’s head off, and was getting decidedly less picky about whose it was.

‘Hey, leave her alone. She’s still a hell of a lot more helpful than you are right now,’ Stiles said defensively, but took an involuntary step back when Klaus flashed his fangs at him. ‘You need to floss more, dude.’

Lydia moved away from the window and stood with both hands flat on the operating table. ‘Those things look like our old enemies, right? They said that they know all our secrets - they think like the people they’re pretending to be. So they’re going to be going to places with significant meaning to us. They’re going to target the people and places that we love.’

‘And,’ Freya added, cottoning on to Lydia’s train of thought, ‘they’ll be going to places with immense magical energy. Places that have seen tragedy, or lots of supernatural activity. They may wear other faces, but they’re working for The Glutton, and its aim is to drain as much magic as it possibly can.’

‘I think we can all think of some likely places, when you factor both of those ideas in,’ Lydia concluded for her.

Kol stepped forward, looking thoughtful. ‘You know Freya, we might not be able to track The Glutton itself, but its phantoms look like our enemies. People we all have links to - emotional links. Surely, with a little luck, you can track those?’

Freya’s eyes lit up. ‘Of course! Kol, you’re a genius.’

‘Not just a pretty face, you know that,’ he replied modestly. ‘So, does anyone have a map we can use?’

Liam was the closest to the door of the room, so he disappeared into Deaton’s office and soon returned holding a large map of Beacon Hills. On it had been pencilled the telluric currents that had been reawakened once the Nemeton was reactivated, and the landmarks around town had been highlighted as well.

‘Are those what I think they are?’ Freya asked as she weighed the edges of the map down with beakers to stop it from folding back up.

‘The bane of our existence,’ Malia replied. ‘They’re basically magical leylines that run through town.’

‘It’s no wonder that thing left us alone once we offered up this tasty feast,’ Rebekah observed. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of magic.’

‘No wonder the worlds are in peril,’ Elijah added. ‘Now then, what do we need to do next?’

Freya placed a large bowl in the middle of the map, and found a scalpel in a drawer. ‘What else? Blood.’

Stiles looked around sheepishly. ‘Blood? Really? Won’t that make these guys go all fangy?’

‘We are the oldest vampires in existence; we have a little more self-control than that, I assume you,’ Klaus told him. ‘Besides, if I wanted to eat you, I would have done it already.’

‘Somehow that’s not as reassuring as you thought it was.’

Freya, ignoring yet more squabbling, drew the scalpel across the palm of her hand, clenching it tightly and letting the blood pool into the bottom of the bowl. She then wiped the scalpel clean and held it, handle first, to Scott who was standing closest to her.

‘We take it in turns. One Mikaelson, one of your pack, until we’ve all added to the bowl. Then we should be able to track The Glutton’s forces.’

‘You know,’ Lydia observed, ‘it’s interesting to see actual magic performed. Like, werewolves and banshees are inherently magical, by definition. But we very rarely use actual spells. This definitely isn’t something we could do without your help.’

‘We were meant to work together against this threat - we’ll all have our skills to contribute, I expect,’ Freya acknowledged, but smiled at the praise.

'If any of you have some weird blood disease or something and we all get sick, I’m going to make sure I murder you all before I die,’ Malia warned, slicing the scalpel across her palm. ‘Gah, that stings.’

‘At least you’ll heal,’ Stiles complained. ‘I’ll just die of hepatitis or Original vampire polio or something.’

‘You’d be lucky to have vampire blood in your system; it heals almost any wound - just don’t die with it there, or you’ll soon find yourself craving blood yourself,’ Elijah cautioned.

‘Wait, what?’

‘Don’t get killed, or you might turn into a vampire,’ Malia explained. ‘How can you be so smart and so dumb at the same time?’

Stiles looked offended, and then stared at the slice on his hand, the folds of skin separating as he moved his palm. ‘I think I’ll just stick with the giant papercut for now then, just in case. I’m pale enough without being undead.’

‘We’re ready,’ Freya announced, placing the blood-soaked bowl in the centre of the map. She held out one hand to Scott and the other to Liam; each of them mirrored her until they had linked into a large circle, encompassing the operating table and alternating between Original and pack member as they had when adding blood to the bowl.

Freya closed her eyes and began chanting. Lydia quirked an eyebrow, attempting to place the language, but couldn’t manage it. It was some kind of corrupted Latin, or combination dialect. Whatever it was, it sounded harsh and difficult to pronounce. Her attention was drawn away from Freya to the blood in the bowl, which had began to creep towards the rim of its own volition and out across the map.

‘That’s simultaneously super-cool and super-gross,’ Liam said, looking warily at Freya. She was a lot more powerful than she looked, and she was gripping his hand tight enough to turn her knuckles white. Abruptly her chanting ended, and Freya’s eyes snapped back open. She broke the connection and moved the bowl away from the map, looking at where the lines of blood had stopped.

‘There’s only five here; those creatures must be working in teams,’ Elijah said, peering down at the map. ‘That makes finding and destroying them all much easier.’

‘We know all of these places,’ Malia added, pointing at some of the points on the map where blood had come to rest. ‘The school, the hospital, ugh, Eichen House.’

‘That’s the Sheriff’s station, where my dad works,’ Stiles said, pointing himself. ‘And that’s the Dread Doctors’ old facility at the water treatment plant, it has to be.’

‘As expected, your expertise of the town is going to come in most handy,’ Klaus said. ‘I believe our next course of action is clear to everyone?’

‘Someone’s going to say split up now, aren’t they? Hasn’t anyone in this town learned a thing since we started all this supernatural crazy?’ Stiles asked.

‘It’d be the best way to cover ground,’ Elijah reasoned. ‘Ten of them. Ten of us. If we are to work together as our prophecies suggest, then groups consisting of one Original and one of your pack would make the most sense.’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Stiles sighed, ‘this isn’t a comic book plot, it’s a horror movie.’

‘Are we going to draw straws, or something?’ Kol asked. ‘Because I’m not thrilled by the idea of working with any of these little shapeshifters.’

‘I think we already know who we should be working with,’ Freya added. ‘When you were all fighting in the woods before, you instantly gravitated towards each other. There’s magic at work here - something wants us to defeat The Glutton, and it’s telling us how to do it.’

‘You mean I have to go with him?’ Liam asked, pulling a disapproving face in Kol’s direction.

‘We can swap. I don’t want to go with Stools or whatever his name is,’ Rebekah added, a disgusted expression of her own sweeping across her face.

‘It’s Stil-you know what, Stools is fine,’ Stiles said dreamily. Lydia stamped on his foot with as little subtlety as she could manage. 

‘I suppose that puts me with you, McCall,’ Klaus said. He had to admit, although he would never do it out loud, that the young alpha was impressing him. His command of his pack, and the way in which he stuck to his ideals was admirable, if naive, as Elijah had said. ‘Try to keep up, maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about how to be a real werewolf.’

‘I get the guy in the suit? How does that make any sense?’ Malia asked, flicking her eyes up and down Elijah’s prim and proper form. They couldn’t have looked more different had they tried, but he blinked at her impassively.

‘Appearances can be deceiving, I expect. Now, shall we be going? The longer we wait, the more chance of these creatures setting traps or kidnapping people you care about, or whatever it is they’re planning on doing.’

‘Everyone be careful,’ Scott said, looking first to his pack and then to the Originals as well. Even as powerful as they were, The Glutton’s minions had already surprised them once and they couldn’t afford to have it happen again. ‘Cell phones on, call if you need help. We’ll all meet back here in a few hours, even if we haven’t found anything. No unnecessary risks, okay?’

The pack nodded, unfazed, and even some of the Mikaelsons joined in; the authority of a True Alpha was hard to deny. Klaus however smiled nastily.

‘Give these things hell. They may wear the faces of those we know, but they’re imaginary - kill them without remorse, and without hesitation. Their deaths will bring us one step closer to our victory.’

Clearly dismissed, the pairs began dispersing through the vet, leaving Klaus and Scott alone together. Scott looked at the older man with a curious expression.

‘Something to say?’

‘Just that your motivational speeches could use some work,’ Scott said with a smile. ‘C’mon, let’s go. We’ve got a job to do too.’

‘Ah, children and their unerring optimism. I genuinely hope you never lose that, because the day you do, the world will never look quite the same.’

And with that, the True Alpha and the Original hybrid marched out of the veterinary clinic and towards their foes. As mismatched a duo as they were, there was something about a union of that kind of power that made even the air itself seem to sit up and take notice - this was a first. Strange happenings were afoot in Beacon Hills and before the night was through, there would be many more firsts; this was just the beginning.


	5. Parental Guidance

'I assume that there’s a good reason we took the hospital, McCall?’ Klaus asked, staring up at the building. It was bustling with people, ambulances blazing past at speed and a cacophony of noise that was painful even to those without enhanced hearing. 

Scott however wasn’t paying attention. He scanned the parking lot, looking around for the one person he needed to see to know everything was alright. Klaus clapped him on the shoulder; he had seen that look on many people’s faces before - usually before he killed them - and it caused a pang in his own heart. ‘Who are we looking for? You care for someone here, I can tell.’

Scott looked back at the older man, and was surprised to see a tender look on his face. Could someone who seemed as ruthless as Klaus actually understand? ‘My mom works here,’ he told him. ‘She knows about our supernatural stuff, and she somehow always seems to find herself in the middle of it all. I can’t let anything happen to her.’

Klaus grimaced. ‘My own mother was a piece of work. She tried to kill me more than once,’ he revealed, and Scott’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Oh, it’s fine, we worked it all out. Sort of. Now, let’s get inside and find your mother, so we can work on finding whoever has decided to set up shop here, shall we?’

Scott flicked through his phone and showed the vampire a picture of himself and his mother together, smiling up at the camera. ‘So you know who to look for,’ he said, before heading towards the building. Klaus smiled to himself. Maybe one day, he would take pictures like that with his own daughter. But first, he had a job to do.

The foyer of the hospital was even more packed with people than the outside. The smell of blood hit Klaus’ nose like a truck, and he wondered how long it had been since he fed last. He would have to steal a blood bag or two from the store room, should the opportunity present itself. 

Scott was at the front desk, deep in conversation with the receptionist. He nodded his thanks and returned to Klaus’ side, worry wrinkling his brow. ‘They haven’t seen my mom for a while. She came in to work, but no one’s seen her for about an hour or so.’

‘Which is about as long as it’s been since we arrived,’ Klaus said, confirming Scott’s fears. ‘That would imply…’

‘That my mom’s in trouble. Again.’ Scott’s worry turned to anger as balled his fists at his sides. 

‘Freya’s spell told us that our quarry is at this location - they’re still here. You need to think, McCall. Where would they take her?’ Klaus was insistent, trying to keep Scott focused. He was the last person to talk about not letting his emotions rule him, but he recognized the spiral that Scott was poised to fall into - if he thought his mother was in danger he may not think clearly, and without Scott’s perspective, tracking down his mother could take a lot longer. A potentially fatal amount of time longer.

Scott shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. ‘You’re right. Let me think. There’s an abandoned area in the basement - we’ve used that for pack stuff before. That’d be a good place to start.’

Klaus took the teenager by the shoulders. ‘We will rescue her, McCall. Scott. And if anything has happened to her, we will wreck bloody vengeance on them all. I swear it. I will not let anything come between a mother and her child.’

Scott looked back, puzzled. ‘I didn’t think you cared about anything but yourself. Why would you say something like that?’

Klaus grinned darkly. ‘You may be surprised to learn that I have a child of my own. Her name is Hope, and she is everything to me. Everything. Fatherhood is a mystery that I would like to have the time to solve, and my ungainly attempts so far have certainly given me...clarity, with respect to the bond between parents and their children. As I said, my mother was less than impressive. And the less said about my bastard of a father, the better.’

Scott could see the distance in Klaus’ eyes as he relived...god knows what. But he began to understand, as well. 

‘And it may also surprise you to learn,’ Klaus continued, ‘that I see something of her in you. A light, a purity, a goodness that I hope to preserve as long as possible. She is, quite literally, my hope. And I will not let yours fade, either.’

'You’ve known me all of an hour, and you’ve already worked all this stuff out?’

‘With age brings perspective,’ Klaus admitted. ‘And I am very old. Now, less talking, more searching?’

‘Right.’ Scott nodded and headed off, Klaus at his side. The vampire’s speech had definitely surprised him - there was a depth to the man that he had initially dismissed, far more to him than met the eye. But there was also a vicious edge to him - when he spoke of vengeance, there was no doubt in Scott’s mind that the vampire could come up with extremely inventive ways of exacting it, and that kind of precision only came with intense practise.

*********

It didn’t take them long to maneuver through the hospital to the abandoned area that the pack sometimes used. As Scott and Klaus rounded a corner and pushed aside a plastic curtain separating the disused area from the hospital proper, voices drifted down the hallway towards them.

'I swear to you, whatever you’re here for, my son won’t let you have it,’ said a woman’s voice. Scott’s eyes lit up in recognition and relief.

‘That’s my mom!’

Klaus breathed his own sigh of relief at not having to console a child that had lost a parent; this relief soon curdled within him as another voice joined the first. 

‘Your son? He will fall before us all, like wheat before the scythe, as will all of his friends, and my wretched family along with them.’

Scott felt Klaus tense beside him, and raised an eyebrow. Klaus shook his head slightly, still listening intently.

'You’re so dramatic, man. Can’t you just kill people and not turn it into a big song and dance?’ another woman said, boredom dripping from every word she spoke.

‘We’ve gotta get in there, right now,’ Scott said, on edge himself now that he realised who had captured his mother. ‘That room only has one entrance. They’re trapped, and my mom’s in danger.’

‘Right. But let me do the talking, for now. Be ready to act, but do not move until I say so. Can you do that?’ Klaus asked.

Scott tore his eyes away from the doorway, fighting the urge to run through it claws swinging. ‘You want me to trust you?’

‘I know how that sounds. What little you know of me probably gives you no reason to do that. But I swear to you, on the life of my daughter, that I will do whatever it takes to rescue your mother. So yes, you must trust me.’

Scott gritted his teeth, struggling with the idea of placing his mother’s life in the hands of someone he didn’t know. But Klaus’ earlier admissions rang true - the man may have caused their current problems, but everything he’d said had sounded genuine. The vampire may have seemed untrustworthy but Scott could tell that, in this at least, he meant what he said.

‘Alright. Let’s do this.’

Klaus nodded, and together the pair of them marched through the doorway into a disused operating theatre. The woman from Scott’s picture, dressed in blue-green medical scrubs and wearing a defiant look on her face that instantly reminded Klaus of her son, was pinned between her captors.

The other woman regarded the newcomers lazily, twirling a long hunting knife between her fingers. She tilted her head to one side like a cat, and actually licked her lips as she noticed their arrival. ‘Well, well. Hello again, Scott.’

‘Kate,’ Scott replied through gritted teeth.

‘I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure,’ Klaus added.

‘Kate. Kate Argent. My niece was Scott’s little girlfriend. Until Scott went and got her killed,’ she said viciously.

'You know that’s not how it happened,’ Scott said softly. ‘I loved Allison. It wasn’t our fault that she got killed.’

‘You got her mixed up in all of this, it’s entirely your fault!’ Kate roared back, placing her knife against Scott’s mother’s throat. ‘Now I’ll take something from you in return.’

'No!’

The other man in the room barked an order, venom in his voice as he did so. ‘Leave the woman alone, Argent. She has done nothing wrong - except birth this rabble.’

‘Screw you, asshole,’ Melissa McCall retorted. ‘My son’s worth more than you’ll ever be. Scott, don’t worry about me, get out of here!’

‘Don’t worry, mom. We’re here to save you; it’ll all be okay.’ Scott told her as calmly as he could, hoping he wasn’t about to become a liar.

'Scott McCall,’ Klaus announced sardonically, ‘May I have the pleasure of introducing my father, Mikael.’

Mikael’s lip curled in disgust, and he spat at the floor at Klaus’ feet. ‘You are no son of mine, boy. You’re a mistake, a constant reminder of your mother’s infidelity, and tonight I will finally be free of your taint on the world.’

Klaus smiled nastily, his fangs poking over the edges of his lips. ‘I’ve heard that before, father. And yet here I still stand. Promises, promises.’

Scott could see his mother wriggling under Kate’s knife, fierce determination on her face. Her captor’s attention away from her at last, she slid a hand into her pocket and slowly removed a syringe. She flashed her eyes at her son, and he nodded slowly. 

Klaus, too, saw the brave woman’s signal. She and her son were cut from the same cloth, it seemed. And that would work perfectly. ‘Your fight is with us. Leave the delightful Mrs McCall alone,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we can work this out like civilized monsters.’

‘Civilized!’ spat Mikael. ‘You are a dog, begging for table scraps and affection that I will never return. And you have the audacity to call me a monster!’

‘Klaus, what are you do-’ Scott began to ask, but Klaus silenced him with a look. Trust me, his eyes seemed to say, and once again Scott found himself wanting to do just that.

‘You are a monster!’ Klaus bellowed. ‘What kind of father abandons his children, and then spends millenia hunting them across the world to murder them? You should be honoured that we continue to live in your name - the Mikaelson name is legend. But it will never be associated with you. You are a relic, father. A useless old man who hides behind hostages and women to do what he doesn’t have the stomach to do himself!’

Mikael’s temper finally broke and he roared in anger, leaping across the room towards Klaus whose last word was ‘Now!’ before both he and his father hit the ground.

‘Mom!’ Scott shouted, and Melissa took the hint. As Kate Argent looked on at the vampire and his father brawling, she took the syringe and stabbed it as hard as she could into the other woman’s arm.

Kate’s hand sprang open, and the large knife clattered to the floor as she screamed in pain. Melissa did no more, fleeing across the room towards Scott and kicking the blade under a cabinet as she did so.

‘Scott! What’s going on?’

‘Not now, mom! Get out of here!’ Scott shoved his mother out of the room and slammed the door as hard as he could, jamming it into the doorframe. They would have privacy, and now Kate and Mikael wouldn’t be able to take any more hostages, either.

‘Oh, Scott,’ Kate snarled as she pulled the syringe from her arm. ‘Do you really think you can beat me? You’ve never been able to before.’

Scott glanced at Mikael and Klaus still grappling on the ground and back again. ‘You’re wrong. I’ve beaten you every time. But we don’t have to do this. You’re better than this. You may not be the real Kate, but you obviously think like she does. Do you really think letting a monster like The Glutton destroy all of reality is what Allison would have wanted?’

Kate actually looked conflicted, her eyes darting left and right in confusion. Finally, to the sound of Klaus and Mikael fighting, she looked Scott right in the eye. ‘You’re right, Scott. That’s not what Allison would have wanted.’

Scott’s heart soared as Kate’s arms dropped to her sides in defeat. But as he looked on she glanced back up with glowing eyes, and snarled a final sentence, ‘But Allison’s not here. You killed her, and now I’ll kill the entire world in return!’

Blue patterns danced across Kate’s skin, and she flicked her hands out from her sides to reveal the brutal serrated claws of a werejaguar. Her transformation complete, she, like Mikael, pounced across the room with murder in her eyes.

*********

Klaus was used to his father’s beatings. The actual events themselves were like a distant memory at this point in time, but the ghost of his father’s hands on him was always fresh. Trauma like that never faded, no matter how many times Klaus managed to murder his father, or banish his remnants, or whatever other way he had to end his tormentor before he finally took the hint.

None of that made the irony of having his own father towering over him and trying to kill him yet again any less harsh.

Mikael swung his fist, and Klaus only just managed to move his face to the side in time to avoid the blow. Floor tiles splintered under the impact, and Mikael snarled in anger. ‘Stay still, boy, and take your punishment. I’ll make it quick.’

‘I’ve taken enough of your punishment to last me a hundred lifetimes,’ Klaus retorted. He twisted his torso quickly, dislodging Mikael and sending him colliding into the operating table. Klaus took the opportunity to clamber to his feet, grab the older man’s cloth tunic in his hands and fling him as hard as his supernatural strength would allow across the room and into the wall with a crunch.

Mikael recovered easily, cannoning off the wall and back towards Klaus, a snarl on his face. Vampiric speed kicked in, and both he and Klaus collided once more, exchanging blows at lightning speed. Klaus knew that the phantom of his father didn’t possess anything that could kill him permanently, but if he was put down here, then he would be at his mercy.

Never one for finesse, Klaus struck at his father’s neck, chopping him directly in the throat and causing him to choke. Even if vampires didn’t technically need to breathe, it was a very effective tactic nonetheless. 

Across the room, a blue blur scythed through the air as Kate Argent launched her first assault. Scott blocked her claws with his forearm and felt the power of his werewolf side emerging, the adrenaline of battle flooding his body. His teeth lengthened in his mouth, his nails extended into claws, and Scott roared in defiance in Kate’s face.

‘I’ll sprinkle your guts over Allison’s grave!’ she snarled back, snapping off a backhand that Scott had to duck under. Even hearing Allison’s name, especially from someone who had barely understood her when she was alive and was now taking her name in vain in some misguided attempt at justice, made Scott’s blood boil. 

‘Shut up!’ Scott yelled eloquently. He lashed out, punching the older woman hard in the chin. Disoriented, Kate staggered backwards as Scott pressed the attack but as he closed in, he realised too late that she was feinting. She raked her claws upwards towards his eyes, and Scott had milliseconds to dart back again to avoid being blinded. Now with the upper hand, Kate persisted.

Time seemed to slow down as Scott retreated, Kate’s hands a blur as she sliced time after time towards him, first at his stomach, intent on spilling his guts, and then back towards his face once again. 

As Kate’s claws closed in, Scott grabbed both of her wrists and squeezed, hard.

‘You’re not Kate. You don’t get to say Allison’s name. And I’m not letting you hurt anyone else,’ Scott said firmly, doubling the pressure on Kate’s wrists. He could feel the bones cracking under his fingers, and Kate’s face, already twisted in hatred, twisted in pain as well. If Scott could see himself, he would have seen the power of a True Alpha blazing crimson in his eyes - this fake Kate stood no chance against it.

‘Mr. McCall has the right idea,’ Klaus said, advancing on his father’s dazed form. ‘Even if you were my father, I wouldn’t feel anything about doing this.’ Still disoriented from Klaus’ throat-strike, Mikael was in no position to stop Klaus from plunging his hand through his chest and removing his heart in one swift movement.

Mikael’s eyes focused one final time as he looked down at the gaping hole in his chest, before back up to Klaus. Instead of blood, dirty brown shadows, the same colour as The Glutton, spilled free from his lips and from the wound. As he toppled backwards, Mikael’s form disintegrated into more of the same and by the time he would have hit the floor, he was gone.

A satisfied smile played about Klaus’ lips. He turned back towards Scott and leaned casually against the wall, crossing his arms in amusement. ‘Did you need a hand?’

‘I’ve got this,’ Scott called back. Kate’s leg axed sideways, colliding with Scott’s ribs, but she couldn’t get the right leverage with her hands still in Scott’s vice-like grip and he barely felt it. 

'Scott, please, don’t do this,’ she said weakly, but Scott wouldn’t let her get the better of him. Just like the real Kate when she was on the back foot, she’d find any opportunity to cut and run. Scott ignored her, gripping even tighter. Kate cried out in pain, and dropped to one knee - exactly where Scott wanted her.

Now in the perfect position, Scott drove his head forward and headbutted her as hard as he could. Unconscious, Kate fell backwards in an identical movement to Mikael, the blue scales and claws of her werejaguar form receding as she did so. And, just like Mikael, she disintegrated into smoke before she had even hit the ground.

Klaus gave a slight nod. ‘I’d have torn her throat out, personally, but your way works too, I suppose.’ Scott flexed his fingers, claws and fangs retracting. 

‘I don’t kill people. Even people that aren’t really people, I guess,’ he said firmly. He rolled his shoulders and then gave Klaus a sympathetic look. ‘Are you okay? It’s not every day you have to fight someone who looks like your father.’

Klaus made a dismissive noise. ‘That wasn’t my father. Not really. Although, as you said to Kate, these phantoms certainly think like the people they mimic. Only someone who thinks like my father could get that angry at me that quickly.’

‘I feel like you have that effect on a lot of people,’ Scott said frankly, and Klaus openly laughed.

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s also not the first time I’ve killed him and, knowing my family’s vindictive nature, it won’t be the last. There’s no love lost between us. I’m fine.’ 

Secretly, however, Klaus was almost touched at the boy’s thoughtfulness. Not only had Scott’s own mother been in danger only minutes before, but he had had his own fight to the death to contend with, and his first thought was not for himself, but instead for Klaus himself.

‘Scott?’ came a voice from the other side of the door. ‘Are you okay?’ 

‘Mom! I told you to run!’ Scott despaired, wrenching the stuck door out of its door frame and opening it to admit his mother, who tumbled into the room and took her son into her arms. Without any hint of embarrassment, Scott and Melissa McCall embraced. Klaus looked away tactfully, finding a very interesting point on a wall to admire.

'Did you really think I’d leave you alone? What was Kate doing back here? Where’d she go? Who was the other guy?’ Melissa garbled, looked around the room with wide eyes.

Scott gave a sheepish smile. ‘Mom, I’ve gotta go. Klaus and his family, me and my friends, we’ve got something important to do. I’ll tell you all about it once we’re finished. But you don’t have to worry about Kate. She’s gone, and so’s the other guy. They weren’t even here at all, really.’

Melissa cocked her head skeptically. ‘This is going to be really confusing when you explain it, isn’t it?’ Scott gave her that sheepish smile once again, and nodded. ‘I’ll just...okay. Fine. Be careful, okay?’

‘Always,’ Scott assured her. He motioned to Klaus, and then headed towards the door. As he passed Melissa, Klaus inclined his head at her kindly.

‘I’ve known your son all of a few hours, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is a remarkable young man,’ he told her. ‘And I can certainly see where he gets his fearlessness from.’

Melissa began to blush, and chuckled. ‘You have no idea, Mr...Klaus, was it?’

‘Please. Just Klaus.’

‘Do you have children, Klaus?’ Melissa asked, glancing towards the now empty doorway. ‘Because if you do, one day you’ll realise that it’s not fearlessness. It’s fear. Every day you fear that something’s going to happen to them, and every day you do your very best to make sure nothing does, even if you know deep down that it will no matter what you do. But that doesn’t stop you trying. So all you can do is show them how to take care of themselves, and make sure that they’re as prepared as you can make them for when it does.’

Before he could form a response, Melissa looked back at him and fixed him with a firm glare. ‘And if I find out that my son and his friends have gotten hurt because of something you’ve done, I don’t care what kind of supernatural creatures you are, I’ll move heaven and earth to hurt you right back.’

Klaus was taken aback, both by the boldness of this woman he barely knew and by how right he already knew she was. He also knew that she was not joking in any shape or form, and there was no doubt in his mind that she would and could do exactly as she promised. ‘You’re right. If I can be half the parent you are to my daughter, I would think myself a success. You are a remarkable woman, Mrs McCall. You remind me of someone I...knew once. She told me things she didn’t think I’d like hearing, as well. But she, like you, was always right too.’

‘Was?’ 

‘Was. And, I assume you, my family and I will do everything in our power to make sure that no harm comes to your son, or his friends.’ 

Scott poked his head around the door frame and regarded his mother and Klaus with confusion. ‘Dude, are you flirting with my mom?’

‘What? No! Scott, it’s not-’ Melissa began, clearly flustered. ‘Klaus was just...asking me for parenting advice.’

Klaus smiled again, and kissed Melissa’s hand. ‘And what perfect advice it was. Goodbye, Mrs. McCall.’

Melissa blushed once again, and gave Scott a look that showed she was definitely a fan of the vampire. Scott gave her a disbelieving glance in return. ‘Mom!’

Klaus pushed past Scott and took him by the arm, pulling him away from the door. ‘Now now, Scott. Let’s get out of here - your friends and my family may need our aid.’

Scott followed the vampire reluctantly, who released the grip on his arm as the pair trooped back through the hospital. ‘Your mother-’ Klaus began, but Scott cut him off right away.

‘Don’t even think about it, man. Please.’

‘Innocent question, I swear,’ Klaus replied, raising his hands in defeat.

Scott cocked his eyebrow, trying to work out if the vampire was lying to him. ‘Besides, I think she’s dating a werewolf hunter, so you’d have some heavy competition.’

‘I’ve killed my fair share of hunters in my time, Scott,’ Klaus warned nonchalantly.

‘He’s also the dad of my dead ex-girlfriend, and the brother of the woman I just headbutted, so I’d rather you didn’t do that,’ Scott sighed, as if even thinking about the Argent family tree exhausted him.

‘Your life is very confusing, isn’t it?’

‘Dude, you’ve been here all of a few hours. You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Oh, I think you’d be surprised. If my less than accommodating father didn’t give you enough insight, the Mikaelson family is the very definition of dysfunctional. But, and forgive me if I overstep, I think you are doing remarkably well.’

Scott looked puzzled. Was he actually getting a compliment? ‘How’s that?’

‘The friends you have amassed around you, for one,’ Klaus continued. ‘They respect you. They trust you implicitly. One only had to look to see how they deferred to you back at the clinic, how they waited for you to decide how to tackle this problem. And when you said that you needed them to work together with us, despite their reluctance, they all agreed. You are a born leader. In all honesty, I wish I was able to inspire anything close to that.’

Scott grinned, and made a dismissive noise. ‘It’s not like that though.’

‘Oh?’ Klaus was genuinely curious. How had this young man managed to inspire such trust in his pack?

‘I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time,’ Scott admitted. ‘All this supernatural stuff, I’ve been rolling with the punches for years now and it’s not easy to deal with. But my friends, they’re always there for me. We support each other, we respect each other. We talk things out together. I don’t lead them as much as we all just work together. They don’t just trust me, we all trust each other. I may be the alpha, but we’re a pack of equals.’

‘Even the little human?’

‘Even Stiles.’

‘Well. That is certainly food for thought,’ Klaus said. Maybe Mr McCall was onto something after all. Mutual respect. Treating everyone as an equal. Trusting each other, rather than expecting them to trust him and do as he says. All very foreign ideas to him, and yet, they clearly worked for Scott. Maybe the way he treated his family, even after all these years, wasn’t the best way to go about things.

Yes, definitely something to think about.

‘And what have you learned from me?’ he asked, hoping to divert his mind away from this potentially troubling subject. Could he really have been doing the whole leader thing wrong, for centuries?

‘Was I meant to learn something?’

‘Not necessarily, but I’d like you to humour me. You may have taught me something, even if you didn’t realise you were doing it. I was curious to see if the feeling was mutual.’

Scott looked pensive for a moment, his off-centre jawline more pronounced as he screwed his face up in thought.

‘You’re so annoying that your dad literally tries to kill you?’

Klaus wasn’t sure whether to laugh or slap Scott about the back of the head. Then he caught the smile on the young man’s face and settled for a disapproving glare instead. 

‘I think, seeing how you reacted to your dad, and my mom...it’s that family can be a good reason to do what we do. And family is who you choose for it to be - like, your dad isn’t your family anymore, even if he’s your dad. And I’m not related to my friends by blood, but they’re as close to me as my mom is. I’ve known that before, I guess, but seeing it from the other side, in someone else, it puts things into perspective.’

‘Yes,’ Klaus replied. ‘Over the centuries I’ve had many ‘friends’ and associates, but family is a constant. And even though I’ve done some horrible things to some of my family, the ones that count, they keep coming back. We stick together. Yes,’ he said again, as if he was convincing himself as much as Scott, ‘you may be on to something indeed.’

Scott grinned proudly, and both he and Klaus continued to walk in silence away from the hospital, where Scott’s mother (who was also on both of their minds, for very different reasons) was now returning to her hospital duties; safe from the immediate threat of The Glutton, thanks to their combined efforts.

These two supernatural creatures, both from very different backgrounds, had managed to unite their powers and defeat the foes that had been laid out in front of them and, in the process, perhaps, learned something about each other, and themselves. 

As they walked, their minds churning with the new information they had discovered, both of them wondered - were the other members of their groups discovering these same similarities and differences between themselves, even at this very moment?

And, if they were, was that a coincidence, or something more powerful at work?


	6. Game Of Hearts

‘I did something awful in a previous life to deserve this, didn’t I?’ Rebekah asked the universe at large as she and Stiles clambered into his filthy, rundown jeep and pulled away from the veterinary surgery. ‘What could I possibly have done to deserve being stuck with you?’

Stiles, silently praying that Roscoe didn’t show him up in front of the extremely attractive vampire lady, turned the ignition. He breathed a sigh of relief as the engine spluttered into life, and looked over his shoulder as he reversed out of the parking lot.

‘Hey, I’m not so bad,’ he said defensively.

‘Do you have fangs? Claws? Can you sprout wings and fly? Or is your only offensive ability the fact that you never stop talking? Do you annoy your enemies to death?’ Rebekah asked scathingly.

Stiles looked hurt. He wasn’t used to being hit with more sarcasm than he could dish out, but Rebekah was certainly giving him a run for his money. ‘I...alright, look,’ he said, turning serious. ‘You got me. I’m the defenseless human. Can you blame me for being a little...difficult? I’m trying, here. Meet me halfway. I’ll try and calm down, you stop being so distractingly hot. Oh, wait, you can’t. And neither can I.’

For the first time, Rebekah stopped trying to ignore Stiles and looked at him, really looked at him. She didn’t need her enhanced senses to see that he was scared. His fingers twitched uncontrollably on the steering wheel, and his eyes were darting around the empty road like a game of Pong. But, and this was the important part, he was still here. His friends needed help, and here he was. 

She and the rest of the Mikaelsons were always there for each other. That was the point of always and forever, after all. But they were all as powerful as each other, in their own unique ways. This boy here, he was throwing himself into a life or death situation with nothing but an attitude and a prayer, all to protect his family. Maybe she should have been giving him some admiration, rather than scorn.

But still, he was annoying.

She steeled herself and nodded. ‘Alright. You’re right. We’re stuck together, so we should probably make the most of it. You stop flirting with me, and I’ll try and take you seriously, how does that sound?’

‘I’m not flirting with y-’ Stiles began, but Rebekah raised an eyebrow and he stopped mid-sentence to reconsider. ‘Okay, maybe I am. No wonder Lydia kept hitting me.’

‘The redhead. You love her?’ Rebekah asked bluntly. A lifetime of dealing with romance hadn’t made her any less conflicted when it came to matters of her own heart, but she had little time for others not paying attention to theirs; Hayley and Elijah were maddening, for example. To her surprise, Stiles gave the most certain reply he had all night.

‘Yeah. Yeah I do. I always have. Lydia’s...Lydia’s everything. We’ve all been through so much together, Lydia especially, and I’d do anything to stop her getting hurt again.’

Rebekah’s initial impressions of Stiles were quickly being blown out of the water. She smiled to herself knowingly. ‘Good. Hold on to that. Keep it close. Love gets you through, even when you think all is lost. And I’m speaking from centuries of experience.’

‘You look good, if you’re that old,’ Stiles said, and Rebekah actually laughed.

‘You can’t even help it, can you?’

Stiles grinned goofily. ‘My brain and my mouth don’t always communicate that well.’

‘So, where are we going again?’ Rebekah asked, knowing full well but wanting to change the subject. Stiles turned serious again as the Jeep turned another corner.

‘The Sheriff’s Station. My dad works there, and if that screaming thing has summoned up my little mistake, I’d bet anything that he’ll go after my dad first, since everyone else I care about can look after themselves.’

Rebekah quirked an eyebrow. ‘Your ‘little mistake’?’

'Yeah,’ Stiles said, and braced himself to relive one of the worst parts of his life. ‘A few years ago, we had another evil spirit called a Nogitsune invade the town, and it needed somewhere to live. So it chose me. Used me to hurt my friends, my family. Kill one of the people I cared about. And right at the end, we split apart. But it kept my face, like a trophy. It thought it’d stop my friends from hurting it. It was wrong. We won. But the things it made me do while it was in control...they’ll never go away.’

The hurt in Stiles’ voice was palpable. Rebekah knew something about being forced to do things she didn’t want to do. The bloodlust that came with being a vampire, the dark curse that she’d been afflicted with; yes, she knew a lot about that. Surprising even herself, she reached over and placed a reassuring hand on Stiles’ fragile shoulder.

‘It wasn’t you. You can’t hold yourself responsible for any of that.’

Stiles looked down at the hand on his shoulder, oddly warm where he’d expected a vampire to be as cold as...well, the grave. ‘Yeah, I know. But it doesn’t make it any easier, you know?’

‘I know, believe me.’

Before Stiles could ask any questions, the Sheriff’s Station appeared as he turned another corner almost subconsciously. All of the blinds were drawn, and no light emanated from within. As the pair exited the jeep, an eerie silence fell as if someone had muted the entire world.

'It’s here. And you can bet it isn’t alone,’ Stiles said gravely, and together he and Rebekah pushed the front doors of the station open, and ventured into the darkness.

*********

The silence of the parking lot pervaded the interior of the building as well. Stiles gripped the baseball bat that he had retrieved from Roscoe’s trunk loosely, ready to swing at a moment’s notice. Next to him, Rebekah’s heels clicked conspicuously. He shot her a look, and she shrugged.

‘I doubt this Nogitsune wasn’t aware of us the second we opened the door. And these are designer, I’m not leaving them lying around,’ she dismissed.

‘You never change, do you, Rebekah? Shallow and selfish as always,’ said a voice. From the office at the end of the hall, a dark skinned man appeared, a playful yet sinister smile dancing about his lips. Next to him, Stiles felt Rebekah tense.

‘Remember, they’re not real. Even if they look like the people you know, they’re not real,’ Stiles reminded her, but Rebekah wasn’t listening.

‘Marcel,’ she said curtly, ignoring Stiles entirely and focusing on the newcomer, who was indeed the fake version of Marcel Gerard that she had battled in her own dimension. ‘Still stuck up and judgmental of everyone around you, yet blissfully ignorant of your own flaws?’ 

It was almost therapeutic, Rebekah thought, being able to say all the things she thought and not having to sugar coat them. 

Marcel sneered nastily. ‘Is this your new boyfriend? Definitely a step down from me, Rebekah. He’s what, twelve?’

‘I’m eighteen, you dick.’ Stiles gripped his bat, hoping he’d get the chance to use it against this stuck-up ass, but Rebekah got there first. 

‘Stiles, find your father. Find everyone else that’s meant to be here - I assume Beacon Hills has more than one police officer, right? If Marcel here wants a war of words, I can deal with him. And if he wants to fight a different kind of war,’ she said, fangs sprouting and darkness clouding her eyes, ‘then I’ll give him that too.’

Stiles was about to argue, but the look on Rebekah’s face made him reconsider. He crept past her and into the Sheriff’s Station proper, a quick glance over his shoulder at Marcel to make sure that he wasn’t about to be stabbed in the back.

*********

The main room of the station was as empty as the foyer had been, and Stiles glanced around carefully, looking for any sign of movement. If the Nogitsune really was here and it really was holding all of the officers on duty prisoner, then the holding cells would be the most likely place to keep them. He slid across the room silently and down the corridor, easing the door to the cells open with the end of the bat.

‘Stiles! Is that you?’ said a familiar voice as Stiles poked his head uncertainly into the room. Sure enough, a group of officers were crowded into the holding cell that usually held drunks or, occasionally, Theo Raeken. 

At the front of the group were two very familiar faces (although of course Stiles knew all of the station deputies, probably better than his dad did) - Jordan Parrish, secretly a Hellhound and sometime member of the pack when he wasn’t brainwashed or trying to burn everyone to death, and Valerie Clarke, Liam’s girlfriend Hayden’s sister.

'Parrish, what the hell?’ 

'We were all working, and then the lights all went out, and when they came back on we were all in here. You’ve got to get us out, right now,’ Parrish replied urgently. 

Even if they were in the cell, at least the deputies were safe. Stiles scanned the crowd, but couldn’t see the one person he really needed to see in order to feel better. But of course, his father was nowhere to be seen. 

‘Where’s my dad? He’s got the cell keycard, I can’t get you out without him,’ Stiles said quickly, although he did briefly consider smacking the card reader with his bat to see if that’d help. 

Clarke and Parrish exchanged a look, and then Clarke replied, ‘No one’s seen him. He was in his office when the lights when out, I think, but he’s not here now. Maybe he’s still in there?’

‘Alright, I’ll be back soon. Won’t be long. Don’t get too hot under the collar, okay Parrish?’ Stiles warned, a sudden image of Parrish going full Hellhound and burning the bars down, as well as charbroiling the rest of the deputies in the process, flashing through his mind.

Parrish nodded, and Stiles returned to the main office. The door to his father’s personal office had never seemed so uninviting - even when his father forbade him from coming inside, Stiles never felt as if the room was entirely off-limits. But now, something dark and primal seemed to be telling him that it was the last place he should be going.

Stiles glanced back towards the foyer, but he couldn’t see or hear any sign of Rebekah or Marcel. He hoped that she was alright, wherever they had gone. But he had his own problem to worry about, and so he squared his shoulders, readjusted his grip on the baseball bat with sweaty hands, and pushed the door of the office open.

*********

‘Alone at last,’ Marcel said, in his most seductive voice. It was one of the things Rebekah loved most about him - how he could make anything sound sensual without even trying. She’d asked him to read the phone book once, and that had turned into an evening to remember. But now, the sound of Marcel’s voice emanating from this...thing only made her skin crawl.

‘Are we going to fight, or are we going to talk?’ Rebekah asked, although she knew perfectly well what the answer would be. Marcel regarded her as if she were a piece of meat, ready to be bled dry.

‘We’ve never really been very good at talking, have we? We mostly just fight, and...other things,’ Marcel observed. He walked out of the doorway he had been hovering in and spread his arms wide, silhouetted against a large window at the end of the hallway. ‘You know you won’t kill me, right? I may not be real, but even I know that Rebekah Mikaelson and Marcel Gerard are destined for more than a Romeo and Juliet mutual destruction kind of ending.’

‘Trust me, that’s the last thing on my mind,’ Rebekah assured him. ‘I may not be able to kill the real Marcel, but you’re a completely different story.’ Without waiting for him to continue their witty reparté, Rebekah sped along the hallway and shoved Marcel as hard as she could, out of the window in a shower of glass and onto the hood of a squad car waiting outside. She wasted no time, planting her foot on the bottom of the broken window pane and diving out herself, ready to land a killing blow. But as she hit the hood of the car, she found only empty air.

Across the lot, spinning in a theatrical circle, was Marcel. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, girl,’ he taunted.

‘I’m just getting started,’ Rebekah spat back, and charged towards him once again. 

Thus began a dance of blows that Rebekah would look back on and compare to her nights of passion with the real Marcel. It was eerily similar, the way their bodies twisted and turned against each other, neither managing to get the upper hand and yet edging closer and closer to victory.

Sweat beaded on Rebekah’s brow; she couldn’t tell how long they had been fighting. Her shoes were now woefully ruined, and hair plastered the sides of her face. Marcel was panting heavily, bent over double, but a rueful smile played about his own face.

‘That was almost as fun as-’ he breathed, but Rebekah cut across him.

‘Don’t even say it. You can wear his face, but you’re not Marcel. I don’t feel anything for you, and you shouldn’t feel anything for me. You’re not even real!’ Her voice cracked as she yelled, all the frustrations at not being able to win her battle, as well as at the memories of the tumultuous relationship that she and Marcel usually had at the forefront of her mind.

Although, that gave her an idea. 

‘Round two?’ Marcel asked, grinning once again, and Rebekah surprised him with a smile in return. This time, she would win.

‘Ladies first,’ she replied, moving as fast as she could towards him. Marcel planted his feet, ready to intercept her blow, but instead of punching or kicking, Rebekah reached up tenderly and kissed Marcel as hard as she could. It was a dry kiss, one free of passion or emotion, but it was enough to shock him into immobility.

‘What the-’ he began, but choked the rest of his sentence. As he looked down, Rebekah withdrew her hand from his chest and held his heart up in front of him to see. 

‘There’s a joke here about having your heart in the palm of my hand, but I don’t think it’s really appropriate now, is it?’ Rebekah teased nastily, and closed her fist around the still-pulsing organ. It splattered into brownish shadows, and the fake Marcel regarded her with something like admiration as his corporeal form dissipated around him.

Rebekah looked down at where the dead body should be, and found herself smiling. ‘I’d like to see one of my brothers win a fight like that,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘Now,’ she continued, turning on her wrecked designer heel and heading back around the Sheriff’s Station towards the front door, ‘I’ve got a horny teenager to find.’

She stopped, the insanity of that sentence dawning on her. She twisted her face into a look of disgust, both at herself and at the world for having her in a situation where it made sense, and was glad that no one was around to hear her as she went inside.

*********

Like the rest of the Sheriff’s Station, Sheriff Stilinski’s office was shrouded in darkness. Stiles’ eyes took a moment to adjust to the familiar surroundings, and he could see a slumped shape behind his father’s desk. He yearned to move towards him, to make sure that he was alright, but if the Nogitsune really was here then he would no doubt just be stumbling right into a trap.

Instead, Stiles edged around the room towards his dad, baseball bat at the ready and head on a pivot, waiting for the Nogitsune to strike.

‘Did you really think I’d just leap out of the shadows and kill you, Stiles? We were together for so long, surely you know me as well as I know you,’ said a sinister voice. A voice that Stiles took a moment to realise was the dark mirror of his own. Stiles span around, nearly sending himself flying, to see a pair of eyes as dark as the voice staring out from the gloom in the corner of the room.

It was disconcerting to be facing a foe he had already vanquished once, but seeing his own face staring back at him with an expression equal parts mocking and sneering, two expressions Stiles himself rarely ever wore, was almost too much to bear.

‘Let my dad go. I’m here now. You’ve got me. Let him go.’

‘Pleading won’t work. You know that. You have to beat me at my own game. Our own game,’ the creature wearing Stiles’ face replied. He motioned with his hand, and a chessboard materialized on the Sheriff’s desk, white pieces facing Stiles.

‘Play. If you win, I’ll let you go. I’ll let you all go. Lose, and...well, it won’t just be the king that gets knocked over,’ it explained. ‘Or, you can try to fight me, and I guarantee you will lose. You can’t fight yourself, Stiles. We’ve been through this before.’

Stiles spun his bat in his hands, wanting nothing more than to smack the smug look off of his own face, but he knew that the Nogitsune was right. He wouldn’t win a physical battle. But then again, that had never really been his forte. He’d made the lacrosse team through some combination of luck and pity, but that didn’t really count. Not in a town full of supernatural creatures that could tear him in two without breaking a sweat, one of whom was standing in front of him. His strengths lay elsewhere. So, reluctantly, he moved his first piece.

The Nogitsune smiled, and began to play.

*********

Rebekah, shoes in hand, walked around the Sheriff’s Station and sighed, frustrated. ‘Stiles! Where are you? Do you need help?’ She walked through the empty main area of the building, pulling at the door marked Sheriff’s Office, but it was stuck tight. Supernaturally tight, since she rammed her shoulder into it and didn’t even make a dent.

‘Not through there, then. Which means that’s exactly where he is. God damn magic,’ she said to no one in particular. Instead of attempting to break down the door and likely dislocating something, she instead stormed away down another corridor, hoping to find another entrance. Or maybe a battering ram.

‘Anyone home?’ Rebekah pushed the door at the end of the hall open and was faced with a holding cell full of police officers, a spectrum of disgruntled and resigned looks on their faces. ‘I think you’re meant to lock people in those, officers, not the other way around.’

One of the deputies nearest the front, a young man only slightly older than the other teenagers Rebekah had managed to find herself spending time alongside tonight, and who filled out his deputy’s uniform very well indeed, got to his feet. ‘Ma’am, my name is Deputy Parrish; have you seen a teenager around here? Tall, kind of gangly, carrying a baseball bat? He was meant to be getting the keys for us, but he hasn’t come back.’

Rebekah looked Parrish up and down with an appraising eye, and then shook herself. There was a time for that, and now wasn’t it. ‘You mean Stiles, I’m guessing? I was looking for him myself. Now, let’s get you out of there and we can all go look together.’

‘Didn’t you hear me? The cage is locked, we can’t get o-’ Parrish began to explain, but Rebekah ignored him and yanked the cell door as hard as her vampiric strength would allow. She couldn’t break the Sheriff’s office door down but, unlike that door, this one wasn’t magically spelled closed. The electronic lock bleeped in protest, but the door slid open and the deputies began to troop out. 

‘How did you…?’ Parrish asked, but Rebekah just winked. Another deputy, a shorter woman with dark hair and a powerful voice called out to the assembled deputies, organizing them into teams and sending them out across town. 

‘Parrish, you stay here and coordinate, okay?’ she said, and then disappeared before waiting for an answer.

‘Desk duty again,’ Parrish mourned, before realising Rebekah was still there. He gave her a concerned look, as if he were trying to see through her to whatever was hidden below the surface.

‘See something you like?’ Rebekah asked, dangling her shoes from her fingers and raising an eyebrow.

‘You’re...not human, are you?’ Parrish asked. ‘I can smell death on you.’

‘Firstly, rude,’ Rebekah said, eyes wide in shock. ‘Second, no, I’m not. But, going back to the first point, rude. Oh, and to answer your question, I know exactly where Stiles is, but I can’t get to him. He’s trapped in the Sheriff’s office with some dark reflection of himself, or something.’

Parrish gave her a look of disbelief and then pushed past her, heading back towards the Sheriff’s office. Rebekah was about to call him rude again before realising that she may have inadvertently stumbled upon another of the many, many supernatural creatures that seemed to roam this dimension. And maybe, if he knew Stiles, he’d be willing to help her. She hurried after him back down the corridor and fell in step beside him.

‘So, what are you? You smell death? That’s not a very good power to have,’ she observed, but Parrish snorted.

'I’m a hellhound. Which is still weird as hell to say, but it’s true,’ he said, and Rebekah felt her eyes boggle.

‘You’re a what?’

‘Never mind, let’s just get to Stiles, alright?’ Parrish pulled up short in front of the still-sealed doorway to the Sheriff’s office, placing his hands on the wood and glass, searching for something Rebekah couldn’t see.

‘I definitely feel like I’ve gotten the raw end of the deal here. Not only did I have to kill a ghost version of my ex-boyfriend, but I now have to save the annoying little human too?’ she said, but Parrish wasn’t listening. Instead, he had closed his eyes and appeared to be concentrating.

Rebekah was getting very irritated. She waved her hand in front of the man’s eyes, but when they blinked back open, flames danced around his pupils. As Rebekah watched, Parrish’s hands began to smoke as well, as if they were burning the barrier that prevented them from accessing the Sheriff’s office.

At a loss for what to do next, she stepped back and let Parrish do....whatever it was hellhounds did. ‘Don’t worry, Stiles. We’re coming for you,’ she whispered to herself, and then added that to the pile of things she would never to admit that she’d ever voiced out loud.

*********

Stiles’ hand hovered over the queen, one of his few remaining pieces on the board, as he looked across the table at the Nogitsune. His father was still slumped to one side in his chair, unconscious and held that way by whatever magic the Nogitsune possessed. His doppelganger looked at him, a look that said he knew exactly how this game was going to end, and Stiles wasn’t going to like it.

‘What? What are you looking at?’

The Nogitsune smiled, a sinister smile that made Stiles’ blood curdle in his veins. ‘Nothing. Everything. It’s going to be so much fun, having you to play with again.’

Stiles gritted his teeth and scanned the chessboard, trying to find the move that would help him win. The divine move. He and the pack had been in this situation before, the last time that they had faced the Nogitsune - totally out of options, completely defeated. And then they had turned the game on its head and won. He had to do the same now. But how?

As he gazed around the board, desperate for a miracle, something caught his eye behind the Nogitsune’s grinning face. Behind him, the doorway to the office had acquired a peculiar corona of energy, as if someone had lit a bonfire directly behind it and the light was fighting to get through every open space it could find. Stiles’s eyes lit up - he had seen that effect before, at Eichen House. He knew exactly what was going on outside, and that gave him the final idea he needed to end this conflict once and for all.

How could you change the game when you didn’t have any moves left? Introduce some new pieces.

‘What shall I get you to do first? Maybe I’ll stab Scott again. I really, really enjoyed that the last time,’ the Nogitsune taunted, licking its lips like some kind of primal animal ready for the kill. Seeing the expression on his own face, Stiles’ fists clenched of their own accord. 

‘Or maybe I’ll do something to Lydia. That would be the ultimate revenge, surely. You took everything away from me, so I’ll start by taking the one person that means the most to you,’ the Nogitsune mused, and that was enough to make Stiles finally snap. The light around the doorway had grown even brighter, and he knew that it was now or never.

He stood up, grabbed the baseball bat from where he had leant it up against the Sheriff’s desk and swung it as hard as he could. In another time, another place, he had upended the chessboard and changed the game.

This time, he went for something a bit more literal.

The baseball bat collided with the Nogitsune’s face with the same sound as hitting a home run; his cheekbone caved in, and teeth sprayed the floor of the office with a clatter. As soon as they hit the ground, they disintegrated into brown smoke and were gone. 

‘How dare-’ the Nogitsune began, one hand on its face and the other raised in defense, but Stiles didn’t give it the chance to continue. He swung the bat in another wide arc and slammed it into the Nogitsune’s raised hand, shattering finger bones and sending the creature reeling.

‘You made the wrong move, pal. You threatened my friends for the last time,’ Stiles told him, and raised the bat once more as the Nogitsune staggered upright. 

The Nogitsune pulled itself up to its full height, which was less impressive than usual since it was equal to Stiles’ own, and lunged for him, hands outstretched like talons and a murderous look in its eyes. Stiles planted his feet and swung one final time, hitting the Nogitsune in the stomach as it approached and stopping it dead in its tracks.

The office door burst open in a haze of heat, revealing Parrish, eyes and hands blazing with orange fire, and Rebekah peering in over his shoulder. The Nogitsune, winded, looked back in horror. ‘What? No! You can’t do this! You can’t kill m-’ he began again, but Stiles interrupted once more, planting one foot on the creature’s torso and kicking him backwards with all of his might.

‘Heard it all before, pal. Go back to hell where you belong,’ he said as the Nogitsune toppled backwards into Parrish’s waiting arms, which folded down onto him like a safety harness on a theme park ride. 

As soon as the Hellhound’s arms closed, they burst into flame which chased across the Nogitsune’s body as if he was made of straw. The Nogitsune screamed, an unearthly sound like the souls of the damned being dragged back to the underworld, but in seconds it was over. The creature was gone, reduced to a wisp of brownish smoke. It was mildly disturbing for Stiles to watch himself get incinerated, but it was also immensely satisfying to know that he’d managed to beat his most hated enemy once again.

Parrish looked down at himself, only to notice that his most recent Hellhound activity had burned through his Deputy’s shirt to reveal his bare torso beneath. He sighed, ‘Aww, man, not again,’ and trudged sadly away. 

As he headed back towards the locker room, Rebekah smiled in approval as her eyes cast over the slabs of Parrish’s stomach - but the fact that he could burn her to death with one hug was enough to cure her of any attraction she might have had to the man. Instead, she stuck her head into the Sheriff’s office and gave Stiles the once over.

‘Everything alright in here?’ she asked softly as Stiles went to the side of the older man slumped over behind the cluttered desk. She watched him shake the man awake, noticing that he still hadn’t relinquished his hold on his baseball bat. 

‘Dad? Dad, are you okay?’

The Sheriff blinked rapidly, hand on his forehead as if he’d just been on a bender even Rebekah could be proud of as he slowly came back to consciousness. ‘Stiles? What’s going on? What happened?’

‘Long story, Dad. But it’s over, for now. I gotta go, okay? Parrish’ll be here in a sec, he’ll look after you. I got something I gotta do,’ Stiles said. He didn’t want to leave his father, but The Glutton was still out there, and he couldn’t leave his friends to deal with it alone.

Before the Sheriff could protest, Stiles had left the room, Rebekah trailing along behind him. 

‘Did everything go okay with your ex-boyfriend?’ Stiles asked, as tactful as ever.

Rebekah waved a hand. ‘Oh, lovers’ quarrels are my speciality. He stole my heart, I tore his out of his chest. Easy come, easy go.’

Stiles gave her a disbelieving look - Rebekah may have thought she hid her emotions well, but she wore them on her sleeve for everyone to see. No matter what she said, fighting Marcel, or even the ghost of him, had had an impact on her. Stiles knew a thing or two about trying to be strong when surrounded by people stronger than you, but in this case, she needn’t have worried. He wasn’t about to judge her - not any more. There was more to her than met the eye, hidden beneath the surface.

‘If you say so,’ he said skeptically, pushing the door to the Sheriff’s station open and letting them both back out into the night air. The sounds of the evening were back now that the Nogitsune and Marcel had been vanquished - the uneasy silence of earlier that night was gone, replaced by birds and distant cars driving through the night.

‘We could have stayed, if you wanted to,’ Rebekah said suddenly. ‘Just for a little while, to make sure your dad’s okay?’

Stiles looked back at her, the weight of the world on his young shoulders. He wasn’t as good at hiding his emotions as he wanted to admit either, clearly. ‘Nah. If I stayed, I don’t think I would have ever left, and my friends need me. Lydia needs me. I’m sure your family needs you, too.’

Once again, Rebekah was struck with admiration for this defenseless teenager who seemed willing to risk it all for the people he cared about. That was a feeling she knew intimately; she had sacrificed a lot for her family as well. How many times had she given up her own dreams of happiness in order to keep her family safe, even when it would have been so much easier just to give up and act selfishly, just once? And here was Stiles, doing exactly what she usually did.

‘Alright,’ she conceded as they clambered back into Stiles’ jeep, ‘off we go. I just have one request, first.’

Stiles looked at her quizzically as he jerked the ignition key, trying to get Roscoe to start. ‘What is it?’

Rebekah brandished the wreckage of her poor, poor designer heels and sobbed theatrically. ‘I may need some new shoes.’


	7. The Reality Of Control

‘So, you stay away from me, I’ll stay away from you, and we’ll just get this done, alright?’ Malia said tersely, shouldering past Elijah and storming away from Doctor Deaton’s office.

Elijah looked down at where she had scuffed his suit and then at the back of her retreating head. It would be very easy to knock her out and do this on his own, he thought, but that would go against what Freya had told them. Like it or not, he had to work with this child. No matter, he reasoned; he had been dealing with errant siblings for centuries - he could pretend that she was Rebekah in one of her moods, and deal with her accordingly.

‘It would help if you told me what this Eichen House place is,’ he said, walking quickly after her. ‘Knowing what I’m walking into would make me much better prepared, and much better at supporting whatever plan you’re going to implement.’

Malia looked back impatiently, and Elijah’s passive face only made her angrier. ‘I don’t need your support,’ she spat. ‘I don’t trust you, I don’t need you, and I’m pretty sure the feeling’s mutual.’ 

Elijah continued walking after her, implacable. Rising to her anger and arguing with her would definitely not serve his purposes, and so they walked in silence, Malia always a few feet ahead and he trailing behind as they trudged through Beacon Hills and out into the surrounding areas. Elijah couldn’t tell how long they walked, his mind wandering as they did so.

This world seemed so similar to his own, full of the same problems. Supernatural creatures leading double lives to protect the ones they loved, threats from all corners that went unnoticed by the common crowd. But in his world, they were battled by those who could deal with them - here, it seemed to be a rowdy band of teenagers designated as the barrier between good and evil. But they must have shown some fortitude before; the fact that they had had enough enemies in their repertoire for The Glutton to conjure was testament to that.

He tried one more time to speak to the feral girl. ‘The woman you saw, back at the grove with the tree stump. You knew her. What was she to you?’

Malia stopped in her tracks, the first time she had done so since they had started moving, but she didn’t look back. She seemed to be wrestling with the idea of telling Elijah the truth, despite not wanting to talk to him at all only seconds before. Finally, her shoulders sagged and she relented. ‘She’s my mother. Or the ghost of my mother. Whatever.’

Elijah raised an eyebrow, but the expression was lost since Malia wasn’t even looking at him. If he was more forthcoming, maybe she would be in kind. ‘My own father was present as well. The wild looking man in the yellow tunic. Although I expect of all of my siblings, I was the least of his concerns. He and my brother Niklaus have far more unresolved issues than he and I.’

Malia, perhaps sensing something of a kindred spirit, finally turned around. She still had a hard look in her eyes, but there was curiosity there as well. ‘Your dad was there too?’

‘Oh yes. Family drama is what the Mikaelsons thrive on,’ Elijah said wryly. ‘We know all about having to fight our family to survive. Our father, our mother, our aunt. I don’t think we have a single relative that hasn’t wanted to kill us at some point.’

‘Thanksgiving must be fun for you guys,’ Malia replied with a smirk Elijah couldn’t help but return.

‘You have no idea.’

Malia tentatively joined Elijah, and the two of them set off again, this time in step. ‘My dad, Peter, he was an alpha werewolf. He’s the one that turned Scott. Sometimes he helps us. Other times, he tries to kill us all. He’s...unpredictable. But the last time I saw him, he fought with us, so he’s getting the benefit of the doubt for now.

‘My mom, she’s a werecoyote, like me. When she gave birth to me, she passed on some of her powers. I spent years as a coyote, living in the woods, because she tried to kill me and it was the only way to escape. It was Scott and my friends that brought me back.’ She said this with little to no inflection, and Elijah was certain that there were some unresolved issues there, but didn’t want to interrupt; not now that they were finally talking.

‘When my mom found out that I was alive, she came back to town and threatened my friends, tried to kill me and get her powers back. But I was the one that took her power instead. She’s in jail now. So yeah, my family’s...weird.’

Elijah nodded. ‘Families often are. But, and this is the important part, just because they are your family does not mean they have to stay that way. I’m not suggesting you murder everyone as my family has, since we are...unorthodox to say the least, but you can choose your own family. I am lucky, I suppose, that my siblings and I are able to get along as well as we do. Well, mostly,’ he admitted, and Malia laughed.

‘I had a sister. She died, too. We used to fight all the time, but I would have done anything to keep her safe.’

Elijah inclined his head. ‘I know the feeling. I’m sorry that you lost her.’

‘Something else I can blame my mom for, I guess,’ Malia replied sadly. ‘But, you’re right. I’ve got a new family now. Scott, Stiles, Lydia, Liam - they’re the ones that’re there for me. The ones that keep me anchored and stop me running back into the woods with my tail between my legs.’

‘Is that a genuine concern?’ Elijah asked, unsure if she was joking or not.

‘No. Yes. Sometimes.’

‘I see.’

They continued in silence again, but an amiable one compared to the awkwardness prior to that. 

‘You never answered my earlier question,’ Elijah remembered. ‘This Eichen House. What is it, exactly?’

Malia took a deep breath. ‘It’s an asylum. The bottom floor is for supernatural creatures that aren’t allowed out into the world.’

Elijah, admirably, took that entirely in stride. It wasn’t the most surprising fact he had heard in the past few hours. ‘And this is important because?’

Malia looked at him like he had learning difficulties and wasn’t quite grasping the concept. ‘It’s a huge concentration of magical people. That Glutton thing eats magic, right? So it makes sense it’d want to have that buffet on the menu. And I thought Stiles was supposed to be the smart one, not me.’

‘You misunderstand the question,’ Elijah said. ‘I mean, why is it important to the phantoms that The Glutton summoned? They have clustered in places that mean something to you all - I could tell as you gazed at the map back at the surgery that this place holds meaning for you specifically.’

Malia was back on the defensive, but it was more reluctance to talk about the subject than outward anger. ‘I spent some time there before. When I was re-adjusting to being human. It was where Stiles and I first...that’s not important. And Lydia spent some time there too. It could mean anything to either of them too.’

‘But you are the one that chose this location to explore,’ Elijah prompted. ‘Do you still have feelings about this place, that have gone unexpressed?’

‘No. I hate the place, and that’s all there is to it. I just picked it because I didn’t want Stiles or Lydia to have to come back here.’ Malia snapped, and Elijah knew that he had pushed too far. ‘It’s just a creepy old house that we all hate. It should have burned down years ago. We’re nearly there anyway, look.’

She pointed at a gap in the bushes and, sure enough, an old manor house loomed out of the darkness. It seemed inconspicuous on the outside, but Elijah could feel a dark aura surrounding it. If Freya were here she likely could have explained it better, but for Elijah it was as if every part of his very being wanted to be anywhere else.

‘So, where do we start?’ Elijah asked. Malia gritted her teeth and regarded the building with as much disdain as he had ever seen on a teenage girl’s face. 

‘There’s only one place they’d go. The Closed Unit. It’s where they held Lydia, and all of the other dangerous supernaturals. The monsters.’

*********

‘Visiting hours ended, like, three hours ago,’ the desk clerk said as Malia and Elijah approached.

‘We need to get to the Closed Unit,’ Malia told him, but the man didn’t even look up. 

‘We don’t have a Closed Unit,’ he replied lazily, poking buttons on his phone. Malia growled, but the man was unfazed.

‘I’m going to break your arm if you don’t give us the key,’ she barked, but the man only yawned.

‘If we had a Closed Unit, which we don’t, there’d be scarier things down there than you, girly,’ he said sarcastically. Malia reached out to grab the man, but Elijah stepped up beside her. 

‘Perhaps some finesse is required,’ he said, and cleared his throat. Finally, the desk clerk looked up from his phone with a bored expression.

‘Look, seriously, it’s not worth my job to let you guys in, so can you just go away till tomorrow and bug someone else?’ 

Elijah locked eyes with the man, and whispered, ‘You want to open the door to the Closed Unit. You will forget that my friend and I were ever here. And you will be far more accommodating and much less rude to visitors in the future.’

‘That’s not going to work,’ Malia scoffed, but her derision turned to surprise as the man stood up and began walking through the halls of the manor, towards the spiralling staircase that lead to the Closed Unit.

‘How did you…?’ she wondered as she and Elijah followed. The vampire actually winked.

‘Fangs and a bad attitude aren’t the only weapons in a Original’s arsenal,’ he told her, but refused to elaborate further.

‘It’s the suit, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘He thought you were like a health inspector or something.’

Elijah was insulted. ‘This suit is far more expensive than any health inspector could afford. And besides, that’s not it at all.’

Before Malia could question him further, they arrived at the Closed Unit door. The desk clerk swiped a keycard through the reader, and the door swung open. He turned on his heel and walked back the way they had come, not even acknowledging Malia and Elijah as he did so. Malia's eyes boggled.

‘Seriously, what did you do? And can you teach me?’ she asked, but Elijah had already stepped through the doorway. She hurried after him, wincing as she expected the mountain ash in the walls to prevent access, but her caution turned to surprise when she found that it didn’t. Parrish had burnt the ash away during Lydia’s rescue, and it seemed that the Eichen staff had yet to replace it. At least something was going right tonight.

‘Now what?’ Malia asked. ‘We’re here, but I haven’t got the first idea where to look.’

‘I expect if we walk around long enough, our foes will find us,’ Elijah reasoned. ‘They’re modelled on our memories - they won’t want to leave us alone for too long when they could be torturing us, I’m sure.’

‘That makes me feel so much better,’ Malia said, rolling her eyes. ‘So, if it’s not your dad that’s here for you, who is it? Please tell me it’s not the little girl - I don’t wanna beat up a little girl. Although I will, if I have to.’

The pair of them walked side by side through the deserted halls. The Closed Unit had mostly fallen into disuse since Lydia had been rescued - the Eichen House management were likely looking into their security issues if a group of teenagers could stage a jailbreak and get away with it. The cells that Elijah and Malia passed were empty, scribbles on the walls and slightly rumpled sheets on the beds the only sign that anyone had used them before at all.

Elijah smiled sadly. ‘No, Davina will likely be menacing my youngest brother, Kol. She was his girlfriend, until we...separated them. But that is a story for another time. No, I expect we shall soon have the displeasure of spending time with Tristan de Martel. My...protegé, I suppose you could call him.’

‘Were you like his vampire teacher or something? Did you show him how to bite people and wear fancy suits?’

‘Something like that. And then my family and I brainwashed him and his sister into murdering their way across Europe in order to distract our vampire-hating father and allow us to spend time without him trying to murder us for a few decades.’

Malia, not always sure when people were being sarcastic (despite spending a significant amount of time with Stiles, who was the living embodiment of sarcasm), gave Elijah as much side-eye as she could manage without her eyes falling out. ‘Dude, what the hell?’

'Yes, well, he was understandably annoyed when he snapped out of it. And then my siblings and I trapped him underwater to drown for eternity.’

Malia’s eyes bulged wider. ‘Dude. What. The. Hell.’

Elijah shrugged. ‘So, there are issues there that may need addressing before I kill him again,’ he mused. Malia just shook her head in disbelief.

‘I’m almost glad my mom just wants to kill me for something that wasn’t my fault. That’s a lot easier to process.’

At that precise moment, a bullet ricocheted off of the wall to the left of Malia’s head. She froze in her tracks and followed the path of the bullet back up the hallway where, sure enough, the Desert Wolf was standing, handguns cocked and a malicious smile on her otherwise beautiful face.

‘Speak of the devil, and she shall appear. Hello, sweetheart,’ she simpered. 

Malia bared her fangs, eyes glowing crystal blue, rage coursing through her entire body. This may not have been her real mother, but the memories the sight of her brought back were raw enough that it barely mattered. The Desert Wolf grinned wider, and disappeared around a corner.

‘Malia, don’t rise to he-’ Elijah began, but Malia had already ran at full speed after the retreating figure. Elijah sighed. His parenting skills would need much more work if he was to help raise Hope. ‘I don’t know why I bother.’

‘Of course you do,’ said the electronically distorted but unmistakable voice of Tristan de Martel from a speaker mounted on the wall above. ‘You can’t help but get involved. You have to have your fingers in all the pies, Elijah. Have to always be in control. Because we all know what happens when you lose it, don’t we?’

Elijah glared at the speaker, but didn’t respond. Instead, he traced the wires leading from the back of the device across the wall and set off in the same direction. If Tristan could hear him, he had to be in the control room, which made that Elijah’s new destination. He debated following Malia, but he had the feeling that she was going to be able to handle herself well enough. She had defeated her mother once, after all. She could most definitely do it again - as could Elijah with the errant Tristan. It was time to put these ghosts to rest for the final time.

*********

The Desert Wolf vanished around yet another corner, and Malia pounded after her as fast as she could. All she could see was red - her mother had killed her foster family, had given her powers she hadn’t known how to control, made her live her life as a coyote for years, and then had the gall to come back and try to kill her again. Even though she’d put her mother down once, Malia didn’t feel fulfilled. Maybe tearing out the throat of this fake version would make her feel better.

‘You’re such a disappointment, Malia,’ said her mother’s voice. ‘You’re nothing like me. You must take after your father - he was a disappointment too. No self control, no ambition, just a selfish need for power that he could never hold on to.’

‘You don’t know the first thing about me!’ Malia retorted, skidding around a corner and seeing her mother stop at the end of the hallway. ‘You didn’t have time to get to know me, you just tried to kill me. Twice!’

‘Oh, but I do know you,’ the Desert Wolf replied. ‘I know that you’re more animal than human at this point. You’re just pretending. You don’t want to be Malia Tate, or Malia Hale, or whatever name you’re toying with now. You’re just an animal at heart.’

Malia knew that she was just trying to get a rise out of her. She knew that the last thing she should do is charge. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself. She growled yet again, baring her teeth like she was backed into a corner and ready to strike, and pumped her arms as her legs propelled her forward.

The Desert Wolf, the epitome of calm, raised her handguns and fired twice. Both shots went wild, and Malia snarled in triumph. This was going to be easier than she thought. She was inches from her mother, she could reach out and tear her limb from limb...and then a metal grate descended, slamming down in front of her, between the Desert Wolf and her outstretched arms.

‘Oh dear. Look where that headstrong attitude has gotten you now,’ the Desert Wolf taunted. She pointed behind Malia and, loathe as she was to show her back to her mother, Malia looked back to see that the bullets had struck a control panel on the wall, triggering the descent of the grate.

About fifteen feet down the hallway, a second identical grate had also descended. Malia was caged between them like a circus animal. They must have been riot prevention measures, to keep rowdy inmates confined until they wore themselves out. Now, they were a prison for a headstrong werecoyote, caught in a trap of her own making.

She snapped her head back to her mother, who was reloading her handguns with delicate fingers. ‘Deep down, you know this is where you’ve always belonged. You’re not a coyote, but you’re not really human either - you should just be locked up. With the other monsters.’

‘That’s not true!’ Malia yelled back. ‘I’m not a monster, no thanks to you!’

‘Oh, Malia. You know that isn’t true. Why do you think I brought you here in the first place? I wanted to lock you up, for everyone’s safety. But I can see that you’re too far gone. You’re too much of an animal to be left alive.

I wanted to kill you with my bare hands, but I think this works just as well. It’s a bit more impersonal, but you’ll die either way. I’m all about results, after all. You don’t become a professional assassin by worrying about the hows - as long as the target dies, the details aren’t important.’

Malia growled, panting heavily. She gripped the bars separating her from her mother, and gritted her teeth as the Desert Wolf raised the handguns once again. Their laser sights converged until they became one large red dot in the centre of Malia’s forehead, and then she pulled the trigger.

*********

Elijah stopped outside the door to the control room, helpfully marked ‘Control Room’ in peeling red paint. He kicked the lock once, straight legged, and the heavy iron door flew off its hinges and landed flat on the floor.

‘How rude, Elijah. That’s not like you,’ said Tristan, who was sitting cross legged on a patchy, frayed swivel chair in front of a large bank of monitors, most of which showed no movement at all. One of them, in the top corner, showed Malia and, presumably, her mother, facing off down a long corridor. At least he knew where to find her once he had dealt with Tristan.

‘Shall we get on with this?’ Elijah asked, dusting the iron filings from the edge of his loafer. 

Tristan steepled his fingers and regarded his sire with a bored expression. ‘Cutting to the chase already? Efficient. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything less. But, surely we could chat first.’

‘I don’t have anything to say to the real Tristan, I have even less to say to a phantom wearing his despicable face,’ Elijah retorted. ‘He remains trapped at the bottom of the ocean, drowning until the end of time. That is the fate that befalls those who cross my family. Do you really think you have a chance of surviving our encounter with a punishment any less than that?’

Tristan shifted in the chair, crossing the opposite leg instead. ‘Do you know the real reason you want to get rid of me so quickly?’

‘Oh, do tell. Like the real Tristan, you love the sound of your own voice,’ Elijah mused. 

Tristan was unperturbed. ‘You hate what I represent. You are always in control. Always trying to be the smartest person in the room, the one holding all the cards. The one that protects his family, and lives happily ever after with his little hybrid girlfriend and the daughter he wishes was his own.’

‘Get to the point, or shall I just crush your windpipe and get on with my life?’ Elijah asked, but he was intrigued as to where the man was going with this. Freya had said that these creatures were conjured from the memories of the Mikaelsons - so there must have been some truth to what they were saying. It may have been an uncomfortable truth, but maybe facing it head on like this could help to overcome it. Although Elijah had a dangerous feeling that he knew the ultimate conclusion to this line of thinking already.

‘You’re deathly afraid of losing that control,’ Tristan continued. ‘Because, if you do, you’ll murder everyone around you - even the ones you care about. That little red door in your mind will swing open for the final time, and everyone will die in a tornado of blood. And they’ll see the real you. The one you try to hide from everyone - even yourself.’

‘And what does that have to do with you, pray tell?’ 

‘I am what you wish you could be. In charge. In control. And without that pesky little murder door to worry about. I can lose control, and not become a monster. And you’re jealous.’

Elijah could feel the vein in his forehead pulsing with anger. He knew this was essentially his subconscious telling him things he already knew. But that didn’t make it sting any less. He crossed the threshold, and instantly felt a myriad of pinpricks across his body. He had time to look down and see the prongs of multiple tasers sticking out of his designer suit and track the wires back to where Tristan had rigged them to fire as soon as someone had entered the room before thousands of volts of electricity coursed through his body.

He spasmed and twitched, his limbs jerking out of control. His legs gave out under him, muscles reduced to jelly as he hit the floor, hard. Tristan’s face filled his field of vision, and his smug smile was the last thing Elijah saw before blacking out.

*********

The bullets seemed to move in slow motion as Malia stared, exploding from the muzzles of the guns and heading directly for her forehead. Malia could see the triumphant look on her mother’s face, and could feel the pulse in her muscles as they told her to move, to act, to do something.

But not thinking had gotten her into this mess. Losing control, falling into old coyote habits, had gotten her trapped and placed her in the path of the Desert Wolf’s bullets. So, even if she had only milliseconds to do it, she had to think this through. She had to control herself. Think like a human, not a coyote.

She traced the path of the bullets, watching as they slid between the bars of the gate, getting ever closer. She couldn’t move in time, not even with her werecoyote speed. She couldn’t knock them off course, or put something in their path. 

Malia’s eyes widened with realization as a plan began to form in her mind. Her mother may have placed her in this trap, but it was the powers that she had unwittingly bestowed upon her daughter that would get her out of it.

To the Desert Wolf, it seemed as if Malia simply disappeared. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, as if she had vanished entirely. The bullets buried themselves in the wall of the corridor harmlessly, finding homes in brick instead of flesh.

‘What? No! Malia, where are you?’ The Desert Wolf crept forward, poking the handguns between the bars of the grate and looking backwards and forwards for any sign of her daughter. ‘Come out, Malia. It’ll be quick, I promise.’

As she approached, the Desert Wolf saw a dark mound on the floor. She squinted and realised, too late, what it was.

From the pile of clothes, a coyote sprang. It slid easily between the bars of the gate, just as the bullets had before her, and Malia pounced towards the phantom of her mother.

The Desert Wolf screamed, trying to turn the handguns on her daughter once again, but the coyote was far too fast for her. Malia darted sideways, bullets pelting into the floor, and she coiled her back legs under her to spring upwards into her mother’s chest.

The Desert Wolf went down, hard, and Malia’s fangs flashed out, plunging into her wrists one after the other. She anticipated the taste of hot blood in her mouth, but dark smoke drifted out of her maw instead with a taste like cigarette butts mixed with rotting vegetables. The handguns clattered to the floor, and Malia bared her teeth in her mother’s face.

‘No! This wasn’t your power to have! This was meant to be mine!’ she shrieked, as Malia reverted back to her human form, her mother still pinned beneath her.

‘You’re meant to be happy for your kids when they surpass you,’ Malia told her. ‘But you wouldn’t know the first thing about that, would you, Mom?’

Malia’s claws tore into her mother’s neck, streaks of dark smoke again erupting from the wounds in place of blood. The Desert Wolf’s eyes rolled back into her head, and her body disintegrated out from under Malia, leaving her kneeling on the floor of the corridor, chill creeping through her bare skin and hair falling around her face in a dark curtain.

A single tear dripped down onto the floor, and that was all Malia would allow herself. Her real mother hadn’t deserved that much, a magical copy version deserved even less. Elijah had been right - you could choose your family; The Desert Wolf wasn’t her mother, and she wouldn’t waste any more time thinking about her. 

She had won. She had controlled herself. The Desert Wolf had been wrong - she was more human than she knew, than she gave herself credit for. She could do this. Her tear gave way to a grateful smile. She suddenly had the overwhelming urge to find her friends and give them the largest hug she could manage.

For now though she stood up, retrieved her clothes from between the still-descended grates, and sniffed the air. Elijah was around here somewhere, and Eichen House was the last place anyone should be left alone.

*********

Elijah woke slowly, aches spreading across his body as his muscles twitched from the remnants of the electricity. His eyes slowly fluttered open and, sure enough, Tristan was standing across from him, holding a cattle prod in one hand and an orderly’s nightstick in the other.

He had been moved from the control room to what appeared to be a solitary confinement cell - there were no windows, and only one door. A lone lightbulb glistened above him, flickering in and out. Chains ran across the walls and ceiling, two of which were clasped tightly around Elijah’s wrists, suspending him off the ground.

‘Torture devices have really progressed in the past few decades, did you know that? There are so many more exquisite ways of delivering pain. Both physical, and psychological. We’ll start with the former, and move on to the latter afterwards, shall we?’ 

The aches in Elijah’s muscles were joined by a blossoming bruise on his ribs as Tristan struck a brutal blow with the nightstick. He winced, and glared out at his captor with as much hatred as he could manage.

‘Torture usually has a point, does it not?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘There’s nothing you want from me; so why bother?’

Tristan gave him a nasty smile in return. ‘Point? Let me see. You ruined my life for centuries, and then had my body thrown to the bottom of the ocean to drown forevermore. Isn’t vengeance point enough?’ He punctuated the sentence with another blow to the opposite side of Elijah’s ribcage. There was an audible snap as something broke inside.

‘Then this isn’t torture,’ Elijah said, spitting a globule of blood onto the floor. ‘This is just a sad little boy who got involved in affairs that didn’t concern him, and got steamrolled by the inevitable engine of the Mikaelson family.’

Tristan’s gleeful expression turned dark, and he drove the nightstick across Elijah’s jaw with another crack. ‘How can you still gloat, when I have you at my mercy? You’ve lost, Elijah. You have no control. You have no plan. By the time someone comes to look for you, it will be far too late.’

Elijah, against all odds and despite the fact that the very act made his face burn with pain, smiled back at him. ‘I am always in control. You think you have me at your mercy? I have you right where I want you.’

Tristan glared, his jaw tight. ‘You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. You’re bluffing.’

‘Would you stake your insignificant existence on that?’

Tristan howled with rage, jabbing the cattle prod into Elijah’s shoulder and delivering a rain of blows with the nightstick across the rest of his torso, like a petulant child slapping at a parent that had forbidden them their favourite toy. Elijah felt himself spasming once again with electricity, and each blow that struck him felt like it was delivered by a jackhammer. And yet, he would not give this phantom the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.

After what felt like an eternity of pain, Tristan’s assault subsided. He stepped away, lip curled in anger but arms weak at his sides from holding the weapons. ‘It looks like I’m going to need something more painful. What a shame. Don’t go anywhere.’

As he turned to go, Elijah spoke through the haze of pain that gripped his mind. ‘Tristan. Before you go, I have something to show you.’ 

‘What could you possibly-’ Tristan sneered, but stopped in his tracks as he noticed the look on Elijah’s face. The usually calm and collected man looked as if he had flipped a switch in his mind - not the humanity switch that all vampires possessed, but a darker, more primordial one.

‘Let me give you a glimpse at what I look like when I lose control,’ he whispered.

Tristan took an involuntary step back as Elijah roared with exertion, pulling the chains that held him to the ceiling from their fastenings. They broke free with a clang, and Elijah whipped them forward, wrapping them around Tristan’s neck with practised ease.

He sped across the room, closing the gap between them easily, gathered the ends of the chains in his hands and began to squeeze.

*********

Malia opened the door just in time to see Elijah’s victorious howl as he pulled the chains tight enough to sever Tristan’s head. It launched itself up into the air and evaporated into dark smoke, while his body fell sideways and did the same.

‘Nice. I got mine too, so we can get the hell out of here now,’ she said but, as she looked at Elijah, she could tell something was very wrong.

The man’s shoulders were heaving, as if he were taking deep breaths after a long run, and his hands were balled into fists tight enough to cause his hands to bleed. The chains had dropped from his grasp and now coiled around the floor, but were still attached to his wrists and slithered like metal snakes as he turned to face her. She gasped and stepped back, all of her warning senses blaring at her to run.

Elijah’s face had transformed, murder etched into every line of his expression. His eyes were black as the void, dark veins pulsing under them, and his mouth hung open to reveal deadly fangs extended and ready to plunge into unsuspecting flesh.

‘Whoa, dude, I’m on your side, you know that,’ Malia said, raising her hands and backing further away. Elijah seemed to contemplate her, as if he were trying to decide if she was friend, foe, or food. Malia wasn’t sure what to do - no one had warned her that their new vampire friends might go all feral and try to kill her.

She blinked, and Elijah was suddenly all she could see as he towered over her, each dark vein easy to pick out of his pale skin at this distance. She wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted to turn back into a coyote and never be human again.

But, she realised, Elijah had much the same issue she did. He was out of control. It all made sense now. He was always so passive, so quiet and unassuming, because of this. Because he was afraid of what would happen if he became...this.

Just like Malia was. Only in her case, she’d turn into a coyote and run away, rather than murder everyone. Maybe.

But now that she knew what the problem was, she knew how to solve it. She didn’t back down as Elijah loomed over her. She didn’t run away. She just stood, and let her eyes burn ice blue up at him.

‘I’m a friend,’ she said. ‘You can trust me. You can trust yourself. You’re not going to hurt me.’ This last sentence was said with more than an ounce of desperate hope. Elijah bared his fangs, ready to strike, but Malia glared back as hard as she could, hoping that she had made the right choice and wasn’t about to become vampire chow.

Elijah’s breath was hot on her face, and his eyes seemed to glare right through her, ignoring the girl outside and seeing through to her soul within. A soul that really, really hoped she wasn’t wrong.

Finally, Elijah faltered. He blinked, once, twice, and then his eyes cleared, back to their usual dark brown. His fangs seemed to retreat back into his mouth, and he stepped away, clearly ashamed.

‘I know I’m meant to ask if you’re okay right now, but that seems pointless, so can I get you anything? Blood, or something?’ Malia asked lamely, but Elijah waved her away.

‘No, I’m fine, just...give me a moment to compose myself.’ He snapped the chains from around his wrists, collected his suit jacket from where Tristan had discarded it on the floor, and pulled it back on gingerly. To Malia, it seemed as if this helped him focus, like he was putting on a suit of armour instead of just an expensive blazer. When he drew himself back up, Elijah looked much more composed and there was no trace of the anger that had filled him before.

‘Please, accept my apologies. I...had hoped you would not see that side of me. It isn’t something I’m proud of.’

Malia gave him a dismissive grin. ‘It’s fine. No harm done. If you’d murdered me, I might have had something to say about it. But you didn’t, so...we’re good. I won’t even mention it, if you don’t want me to.’

Elijah smiled appreciatively. ‘That would be wonderful, thank you. My siblings would only worry, and there are more important subjects at hand. Did you manage to subdue your mother?’

Now it was Malia’s turn to look awkward. ‘Yeah, I got her. I don’t...really want to talk about that either.’

Elijah looked at the young woman, this little ball of rage and ferocity just barely contained in human form, and felt a level of kinship he hadn’t felt with anyone for a very long time. Somehow, she understood him more than anyone, except perhaps Hayley. 

The ghost of Tristan had been right about one thing - The Red Door in his mind, the one he kept closed at all costs, was something he was desperately ashamed of. But maybe, if Malia were to be believed, he could learn to live with it. If she could control her coyote side, acting against her nature, maybe this was something he could attempt as well. Having lived for hundreds of years thinking himself a monster, it would take time to change his ways. But maybe, if this young girl could do it, he could learn to do it too.

He nodded, back to business once again. ‘Understood. Shall we get out of this dismal place, and see if we can reconnect with everyone else? Hopefully they have been as successful in their endeavours as we have in ours.’

‘Good idea. I hate this damn place.’

‘My sentiments exactly.’


	8. Sympathetic Magic

'I swear, I’ve spent far too much time at high school, and yet I keep finding new reasons to go back. Especially in the middle of the night. Where did my life go so wrong?’ Lydia wondered aloud as she and Freya pulled into the parking lot of Beacon Hills High. Next to her, Freya was stretched out in the passenger seat, head on her chin, staring out the window at the surrounding trees and houses, enraptured.

‘Hey, are you okay?’ 

Freya glanced back, a sad, wistful smile on her face. ‘I’m fine, still a little tired from before, I guess. And...no, it’s silly. You barely know me.’

Lydia shrugged her shoulders and smiled widely. ‘I make friends very, very quickly. What’s up?’

Freya’s smile returned, the corners of her eyes creasing sadly. ‘I’ve missed so much. I spend so much time looking out for my family that I forget sometimes that I should live for myself. Looking at all these quaint little houses, the actual white picket fences, it reminds me of how crazy my life actually is. Plus, you never see any of this kind of thing in New Orleans.’

‘Wait, you guys live in New Orleans? Jealous much?’

‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ Freya warned. ‘Vampires, werewolves, witches, there’s always some kind of war going on to distract you from the nicer things in life.’

‘Hence the sad.’

Lydia looked at her passenger, gazing longingly out of the window once again, and felt a deep sorrow for her. She couldn’t have been too much older than she herself was, and yet she seemed to have the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Of course, most of Lydia’s last few years at high school had been taken up with dealing with her own brand of supernatural weirdness, so she could certainly empathize.

‘So,’ she asked, trying to change the subject and satisfy her insatiable curiosity. ‘That was, like, actual magic back there. With the potentially-hepatitis-spreading blood ritual, and everything. That’s new.’

‘You mean you have all of these supernatural creatures in your town, but you can’t harness magic itself?’ Freya asked, clearly taken aback.

‘Not...so much, no.’

‘Magic is...intrinsic to the supernatural. It’s how it all works, how it’s all tied together. You really don’t have a witch, or a warlock or something?’

‘The closest we came to was the woman you saw at the Nemeton, the one that kept flickering in and out.’

‘With the…’ Freya didn’t seem to be able to articulate her thought very well, so she just indicated her entire head and pulled the ugliest face she could manage. ‘...face?’

Lydia smiled appreciatively. ‘With the face, yeah. She was my old English teacher, and a Darach; a dark druid. She could make all sorts of creepy stuff happen, and there wasn’t much we could do to stop her. Magic’s kind of its own thing in Beacon Hills. We just go with the flow, for the most part. Which is epically frustrating, like, all of the time.’

‘Your boyfriend, he mentioned that he was the only human in your pack,’ Freya said, and Lydia caught herself smiling slightly at the word boyfriend. ‘So if you’re not just a human, and you’re not a witch, or a werewolf, what are you? If you don’t mind me asking, of course.’

'I didn’t know myself, for the longest time,’ Lydia replied. It was curious, she thought, but it was very easy to open up to this woman. In fact, it was nice in general just to be able to discuss the supernatural side of her life with someone who had an outside perspective, rather than just her friends. Of course they were all great, but fresh eyes and ears were appreciated every now and again. ‘It was the Darach that worked it out, actually; I’m a banshee. I sense death.’

Freya frowned, pondering. ‘That seems a little passive, in terms of power, I mean.’

'Hey!’ Lydia objected playfully. ‘I’ll have you know that falling over dead bodies is an extremely helpful skill. Plus I have a very, very loud scream.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Freya laughed, and both she and Lydia felt more at ease than they had since the night had started. Sure, their family and friends may have been in danger from a magic draining monster that threatened all of reality, but at least they had someone to talk to.

‘I’m so glad I got to go with you,’ Lydia admitted. ‘There was a hell of a lot of testosterone in that operating theatre and I don’t think I could have dealt with that all night. No offense to your brothers, of course.’

‘None taken,’ Freya conceded. ‘A break from my brothers and their drama is very much needed every now and then.’

‘I feel sorry for your sister though,’ Lydia said. ‘Having to go with Stiles.’

‘If he hits on her, she’ll break him in half.’

‘Of that, I have no doubt,’ Lydia laughed.

And then the world turned upside down.

Lydia’s car was lifted off the road and thrown sideways, rolling over onto its roof with a horrendous screech of metal. The windows shattered, raining shards of glass like a deadly storm down onto the two women. Luckily, both Lydia and Freya had yet to unclasp their seatbelts and were relatively unharmed.

‘What happened?’ Lydia groaned, rubbing her head and looking out of her destroyed window. Next to her, she could hear Freya extricating herself from the wreckage and pulling herself onto the sidewalk. Lydia reached out gingerly and popped the door of her car open, sliding out awkwardly to join her.

‘We were getting impatient, listening to you two bonding,’ said a voice from above. ‘So we thought we’d get the party started already.’ Lydia and Freya followed the sound, their heads raising higher and higher until they were staring at the top of the school building.

There, one hand clasped and the other outstretched from the spell they had simultaneously cast to overturn Lydia’s car, were Jennifer Blake and Freya’s aunt Dahlia.

‘I’m going to bill you for damages,’ Lydia said, sounding far more confident than she thought she should, considering the circumstances. Maybe all this danger had made her bolder. Or maybe she had a concussion. That seemed more likely.

‘Feisty, isn’t she?’ Dahlia commented with a cruel chuckle.

‘Freya, who is that?’ Lydia asked, moving closer to the other woman, presenting a united front against their foes.

Freya’s jaw was clenched, and her eyes never left the older woman’s face. ‘You know how I said I missed out on a lot? She’s the reason why. My sadistic aunt Dahlia - the most powerful witch I’ve ever met.’

‘Great,’ Lydia sighed. ‘Just great. So, what do we do?’

Jennifer tilted her head to one side, considering her prey, a predator waiting to pounce. ‘Do? Lydia, you’re not going to do anything. You’re both in our trap now, and that means all you need to do is die - hopefully in an amusing way.’

‘Get behind me, Lydia,’ Freya warned, raising her own hands and beginning to chant under her breath.

‘Oh, I don’t think so, sweet one,’ Dahlia said, grasping Jennifer’s hand even tighter. The two of them fixed both Lydia and Freya with a paralyzing glare before also beginning to chant, and Lydia wasn’t sure what to do - if there was anything she could do. All she knew was, if these two magic users completed their spell before Freya did whatever she was going to do, they were both going to die. But, like she’d explained to Freya, magic wasn’t easy to manipulate for her and the pack. All she could do was…

Lydia opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and screamed as hard as she could. The soundwaves echoed outwards, shattering the brick wall that both Jennifer and Dahlia were perched upon and sending them tumbling towards the ground.

It was a three storey drop, straight down. It should have incapacitated them, or even been fatal. But instead, just before the pair could hit the cement, they began to hover in mid-air, righting themselves and standing impatiently back on solid ground.

‘That was rude, Lydia,’ Jennifer scolded. ‘Didn’t your mother ever teach you to keep your mouth shut when other people are talking?’

‘And we both know that your spells were never any match for my power, Freya. You should quit while you’re behind,’ Dahlia added.

Without waiting for a reply, both women raised their arms in unison and flung them out to their sides. Lydia and Freya were pulled from their feet, as if invisible hooks had latched onto their clothes, and tossed across the courtyard through windows at opposite ends of the school with a deafening crash of yet more shattering glass.

Dahlia and Jennifer looked at each other briefly before turning on their heels and heading back into the school. The hunt was on.

*********

Lydia dragged herself reluctantly back to reality, shards of glass dropping from her hair and clothes as she pulled herself to her feet. The world spun dangerously, and she blinked to try to clear her vision. Her entire body ached as if - well, as if she’d been in a car accident and then thrown through a window, but she couldn’t stay still for long.

She knew that their attackers had to be on their way. She also knew that she had no defense against their magic. There was only one thing for it - she had to find Freya. Lydia may have been the most independent person she knew, but she wasn’t afraid to ask for help when she needed it; and right now, she needed all the help she could get.

She took stock - she had landed, luckily, in a drama classroom with a wide empty space in the centre, which had made her landing far less complicated than if she’d been thrown into, say, the chemistry lab - the thought of which gave her an idea.

The hallways of the school were, predictably, deserted at this time of night, but that just made it even more difficult for Lydia to sneak around silently. She discarded her heels and padded quietly along, mourning the fact that this wasn’t the first, or probably even tenth, time she’d been locked in the high school with a monster trying to kill her.

This was her life now. Ever since her banshee abilities had come into play, she had found herself drawn more and more into the supernatural world. Was this how her life was meant to play out? Was she always going to be finding dead bodies, and hearing voices, and having visions, until she went crazy like her grandmother?

She shook herself, both physically and mentally. No. That wouldn’t happen to her. She wasn’t alone. She had her friends, and her mother. She wouldn’t have to handle anything by herself if she didn’t want to. 

Provided, of course, that she got through this night alive.

‘Lydia?’ Jennifer’s voice echoed around the empty corridors as if she were in a deep system of caves, and Lydia slammed herself behind a row of lockers as it came closer. ‘I know you’re here somewhere. Come out, let’s make this quick, hmm? I know, I know, if I wanted it quick I should have just killed you before, but if you learned anything from me in English, you know that I love a bit of drama. Even if it’s the unnecessary kind. So how about you just come on out here and let me murder you, quick and easy, so I can get back to draining magic from this god-forsaken school?’

At the end of the hall, Lydia could see her former teacher passing by, silhouetted against an open classroom door like a creature emerging from hell. Lydia closed her eyes, willing her to move on. Jennifer’s taunts continued to echo, but quieter, softer, as she receded into the distance. Lydia released the breath she didn’t know she had been holding, and then slid along the corridor into the chemistry lab.

High schools had plenty of things that could be made into weapons. The sports department had enough sharp edges to arm an entire battalion, and the art classrooms had their fair share of toxic chemicals and makeshift bludgeons. But if you really wanted to do some damage, Lydia reasoned, then the chemistry lab was where you needed to be.

The cabinet that held most of the chemicals she needed was, of course, locked. She didn’t have time to pick it, so Lydia pulled off her jacket, wrapped it around her fist, and drove it as hard as she could into the glass with a muffled thump. It broke, cracks spider-webbing across the pane until it finally gave way and shattered noisily. If she saw anymore broken glass her entire life, it would be too soon.

Wasting no time, Lydia grabbed the bottles and jars that she needed, hastily arranging them on the desk nearest the cabinet - there was a chance that Jennifer hadn’t heard the glass breaking, but Lydia knew her luck wouldn’t hold out that long. She threw the chemicals into a beaker, sweat beading on her brow as she concentrated.

Which is how Jennifer found her, as she strode into the classroom, victorious grin plastered across her face. ‘Extra credit assignment, Lydia? I thought you’d graduated by now,’ she sneered, and Lydia froze at the sound of her voice, pipette full of liquid dangling from her fingers.

Jennifer’s form flickered, the heavily scarred Darach momentarily taking the place of the beautiful woman, face caught in a perpetual grimace. It screamed, and it felt as though Lydia’s very soul was being torn from her body. 

She staggered against the countertop, wanting to ram her hands over her ears to block out the noise of the magically enhanced screaming, but knowing that the second she did, she would lose any advantage of surprise she had. It was now or never; she made her move.

*********

Freya landed hard on a row of desks, sliding across their polished surfaces and coming to a halt in a heap on the floor between the aisles. The impact knocked the wind right out of her, and she inhaled deeply to try and re-centre herself before getting to her feet.

There was no time to feel sorry for herself - Dahlia and the other woman, the dark druid that Lydia had mentioned, were stalking the halls of the school no doubt. She had to get to Lydia, and find a way to stop their tormentors before they did some real damage.

It was strange, Freya thought as she poked her head out of the classroom and, spotting no one, began to slink through the halls as quietly as she could. She’d known Lydia a few hours at most, but felt oddly protective of the younger woman. She could see shades of herself within her; the loneliness, the isolation that came with the powers they possessed; how their lives had improved when they had found their families. She wouldn’t let Dahlia take that away from her - she had already taken so much from Freya herself.

As if the very thought of Dahlia had acted as a summoning spell, Freya turned a corner and nearly ran into the phantom of her aunt, who was marching along the opposite hall like a woman on a mission. Freya skidded to a halt, and the sound of her shoes on the tiles was enough to draw Dahlia’s attention. She spun around, a triumphant smile on her face, and raised a hand, fingers drawn together like a claw.

‘Hello, dear niece,’ Dahlia said, as pain wracked its way through Freya’s skull. It was as if Dahlia was holding her head in a vice, and the more she constricted her fingers the more pressure was applied. She screamed, not wanting to, but finding no other way to release the pain.

‘I thought you’d put up much more of a fight than this,’ Dahlia mourned. ‘I had been waiting so long to see you again. I thought I had taught you better than this - allying yourself with banshees and werewolves and all manner of horrible creatures. And that’s without even mentioning the rest of our wayward family.’

Freya stumbled sideways, only barely hearing her aunt’s words over the pounding of blood in her ears. She was going to die; if she couldn’t stop this pain soon, she would black out, and then she would be at the mercy of this thing wearing Dahlia’s face. 

Power flared under her fingers as she flexed them almost involuntarily. She thrust her hands out from her chest towards Dahlia, forcing her back along the corridor. It was a weak spell, in comparison to the power that Freya truly possessed, but it was enough - Dahlia’s own spell was broken, and Freya could concentrate again.

Obscurely, she could feel the blood dripping down from her nose as a result of Dahlia’s attack. She absently wiped it with one hand, and flicked her other hand at the lockers either side of where Dahlia had stumbled.

The walls of metal collapsed inwards like a mining tunnel finally losing all cohesion. With an almighty crash and a muffled scream from Dahlia, the lockers fell forwards and smothered her. Locker doors sprang open, raining textbooks, gym clothes, and all sorts of other high school knick knacks down onto her.

It wasn’t enough to kill her, Freya knew. But it was enough to keep her occupied long enough to regroup and formulate a better plan. As powerful a witch as she herself was, Dahlia, even this fake version, was always more powerful. Freya however was much smarter with how she applied her powers. She could out-think her aunt, without a doubt. But first, she had to make sure Lydia was safe. And maybe, together, they could find a way to bring down both of their foes at once.

Without waiting to see if Dahlia was still conscious, Freya took off down one of the corridors, hoping to find Lydia before something worse did.

*********

With the sound of the Darach’s magically infused scream threatening to tear her brain in two, Lydia squeezed the pipette of liquid into the waiting beaker. The droplets of acid hit the concoction below, and the reaction was, as Lydia knew it would be, deadly.

Green gas began to funnel its way out of the mouth of the beaker - pure chlorine gas. One hand over her mouth, Lydia grabbed the beaker and threw it as hard as she could into the screaming face of the Darach, whose scream was abruptly cut off as she inhaled a lungful of the noxious fumes.

The creature doubled over, reverting back to its Jennifer Blake persona, and began to cough and retch. Lydia, seeing her opening, dashed around her, delivering a swift kick to the back of her legs on the way past. Jennifer collapsed to the floor, spluttering, and Lydia beat a hasty retreat.

In a perfect world, a deadly smoke bomb to the face would have been enough. But considering all of the other potentially fatal events the real Jennifer Blake had escaped, Lydia held no illusions that this fake version could survive a little poisonous gas. She flew through the halls of the school on auto-pilot, not sure where she was going to end up, but not caring as long as it was far away from the Darach.

Somehow it seemed to always come back to the library. Since it’s renovation, there seemed to be even more supernatural occurrences and attacks in the stacks than ever before. So when Lydia found herself slicing her keycard through the reader and falling through the doors into the massive room, she was almost not surprised. She wasn’t sure if it was an innate sense of direction or her banshee abilities, but here she was, yet again.

Knowledge was the key. Lydia knew, even with her more recently developed offensive capabilities, that she’d never best Jennifer in a straight-up fight. But she could most definitely develop a plan that could put her out of action. And where best to do that than surrounded by knowledge itself?

Just as the doors clicked shut behind her, Lydia heard the bleep of the card reader again and spun on her heel, already taking a deep breath and readying her voice to scream. But the woman collapsing through the door wasn’t a threat - it was Freya.

‘Oh, thank god, it’s you!’ Lydia breathed, releasing her scream. ‘How did you get through the card reader?’

Freya smiled a small smile and wiggled her fingers. ‘Magic’s not just for throwing people through windows. Are you okay? I wasn’t sure where you’d go, then I saw you running past and followed you in here.’

‘I don’t know why I’m here either,’ Lydia admitted. ‘I ran into Jennifer, and then I ended up here. Finding myself in strange places happens more often than I’d like it to.’

‘Banshee thing?’

‘Banshee thing.’

Freya looked around the expanse of the library and whistled low. ‘That is a lot of books.’

Lydia shrugged. ‘There aren’t a lot of great things about Beacon Hills High; we have far too many monster attacks, our exam results aren’t the best, and our lacrosse team regularly loses (usually because of said monster attacks), but we do have a killer library.’

‘Do you think there’s something in here that can stop them?’ Freya asked. ‘I didn’t think school libraries had much on witches and dark druids. At least, not accurate information anyway.’

Again, Lydia shrugged. ‘We’re here for a reason. There must be something we can use.’

‘Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it quick - Dahlia’s still out there, and it sounds like you didn’t stop Jennifer for long either.’ Both women descended the stairs and walked through the aisles aimlessly, looking for something, anything, that looked suspicious and/or helpful.

‘How did you stop Jennifer before?’ Freya asked, running her hands across the spines of the books she walked past and finding nothing but high school reference books. 

‘We didn’t,’ Lydia said. ‘She was killed by someone else, one of our other enemies. Although,’ Lydia paused, considering, ‘he’s actually more of an ally these days.’

‘I would like to say that that’s surprising, but it’s really just surprisingly familiar,’ Freya said with a snort. ‘My family has a habit of working with our enemies - I’ve only known them a short time, and it’s happened more times than I can count. Even against Dahlia, we ended up asking our mother for help, when she’d previously been trying to kill us herself. It was unexpected, but it worked. We were able to take her down by doing the one thing she never expected us to do. That’s probably her only weakness.’

‘Mistletoe can disrupt the Darach’s magic - we know that too, at least,’ Lydia added, turning another corner. ‘Not that there’s any around here.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ Freya said, pulling a book from the shelf. Embossed across the front was the ungainly title, ‘Famous Norse Myths, Including The Tale Of Balder The Brave.’ She held it close to her chest and headed off in the direction of Lydia’s footsteps, the beginnings of a plan forming in her mind.

And that was when, on opposite sides of the library, both women heard the unmistakable beep of the library card reader once again, and their foes entering for what they assumed was their final confrontation.

*********

‘Wow,’ said Jennifer, ‘I wish they’d had this when I was teaching here. This place is amazing.’

‘Sightseeing later - we have enemies left to vanquish,’ Dahlia scolded. Then, to the room at large, ‘Come out Freya, and bring your friend too. We’ll make this quick. You both know that you are no match for our power.’

Jennifer suddenly coughed explosively, banging her fist into her chest. When the fit subsided, she drew herself up to her full height and glared at the seemingly empty room. ‘That little stunt with the chlorine was clever, Lydia. I’d definitely give you top marks. But now it’s time for the final exam, and the pass mark for that is brutal.’

From her vantage point in the corner of the room, Freya could see Jennifer and Dahlia in front of the entrance to the library. She could also see, high above her on the second floor, Lydia peering down at her, eyes wide in panic.

Freya held up the book, and then pointed at herself. She knew what she wanted to communicate, but she wasn’t sure if Lydia could understand her from so far away. She mouthed, ‘follow my lead’ as slowly and clearly as she could, and then, steeling herself, she stepped out into the middle of the room, right into the eyeline of Jennifer and Dahlia - the last place on earth she wanted to be.

‘I’m here, aunt. I won’t resist any further. You’re right. I’m no match for you.’

Dahlia smiled cruelly. ‘I’m glad you finally see sense, girl. I’d like to leave you around, I could use your talents, but The Glutton has given us our orders. You must die. And so must your flame-haired friend, wherever she is.’

‘I’m here,’ Lydia said. She walked cautiously down the spiral staircase that led to the second level of the library. She really, really hoped that Freya knew what she was doing. Even in the gloom, she had managed to work out what book Freya was now holding behind her back, but she wasn’t sure how it could help them. 

She joined Freya, and together they faced their enemies. 

‘How shall we do this?’ Dahlia asked. ‘Do you have a preference?’

Jennifer seemed to consider this, then shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I’ve killed people in lots of different ways. I don’t really have a favourite. Your choice.’

Lydia tried to catch Freya’s eye, but she was staring steadfastly ahead. She tapped the book with a finger, and out of the corner of her mouth, she whispered, ‘Do you trust me?’

It was a ridiculous question - in any other circumstance, Lydia would have said no. But, standing here, facing off against the woman who had finally put a name to her own supernatural abilities, and an honest-to-god witch, there were very few people Lydia would have wanted beside her. She nodded, very slowly, that she did.

‘Witches were once burned at the stake, correct?’ Dahlia asked. ‘Incineration sounds like a good idea, do you agree?’

'Just get on with it,’ Freya spat. ‘I’m bored of waiting. If you’re going to kill us, put us out of our misery and go crawling back to your master.’

Dahlia’s eyes turned fierce, and Jennifer looked mildly annoyed as well. ‘Are you that eager to die, Freya?’

‘I’m eager to get away from you - the woman whose face you wear controlled enough of my life. You can’t control my death.’ 

‘Very well!’ Dahlia shouted, and held out her hand for Jennifer to grasp. ‘Together, then?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Jennifer replied, and her glamour dissipated once more to reveal the pale, scarred visage of her true Darach form. 

The two women began to chant, and Lydia could feel the very air around her begin to boil. In front of them, between their outstretched hands, a ball of swirling fire materialized, growing by the second until it threatened to scorch the floor and the hands of its summoners. 

Freya reached out her hand, and Lydia filled it with her own. She looked down at their interlocking fingers, and then up at Freya. 

‘Sympathetic magic,’ was all she said, and tapped the Norse mythology book once again.

Suddenly, it all became to clear to Lydia. It was ingenious, and her expression must have shown her understanding to Freya too, because she nodded firmly.

‘Last words to each other? How sweet,’ Jennifer observed, and then both she and Dahlia flexed their fingers and propelled the now enormous fireball across the space between them. As it approached, Lydia couldn’t help but close her eyes as the heat pressed down on her like a physical presence.

‘Now!’ Freya shouted, and whipped the book she had been holding up in front of her, open to a page depicting Loki, god of tricksters, speaking to a sprig of mistletoe. The fireball collided with the open book, but instead of turning it to ash it actually halted in midair, flickering like Jennifer’s glamour spell.

‘What? What’s going on? Why aren’t they dead?’ Dahlia shrieked, and Jennifer’s face was a mask of anger.

‘Very clever, Lydia!’ she called over the roar of the fireball. ‘But what do you hope to accomplish? You’re only delaying the inevitable. You don’t have anything that could hurt us, and your friend’s a little preoccupied.’

‘I’ve learned a few tricks since I last saw the real Jennifer Blake,’ Lydia shouted back. ‘She told me what I was and you know what they say - knowledge is power.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Dahlia began, looking frantically from Jennifer to Freya and Lydia and back.

‘Expect the unexpected,’ Freya said through gritted teeth, fingers digging into the edges of the book that was even now still pressed against the edge of the fireball, keeping it suspended in mid-air, unable to complete its fatal arc and incinerate them but also unable to burn out. She glanced to her side, and met Lydia’s eyes. ‘You know what to do?’

‘What I do best,’ Lydia said, then seemed to reconsider. ‘Well, one of the things I do best, anyway.’ She turned back to the fireball, released Freya’s hand, and screamed as loudly as she could.

As she did so, Lydia thrust her hands out from her chest, as if she were pushing the very sound itself through the air. The soundwaves seemed to crystallize in the air, becoming physical, and struck the suspended fireball at top speed.

Before Jennifer and Dahlia knew what was happening, the fireball had rocketed away from Freya and enveloped them both. Their screams were drowned out by Lydia’s own, and when she finally exhaled the last of her breath, there were only two small brownish black stains on the carpet where they had once stood.

Lydia sighed heavily. Freya placed the Norse Mythology book back on the shelf, and the pair of them left the library, trudging back across the parking lot together, exhausted but triumphant.

'You’re very quick on the uptake,’ Freya observed. ‘And thank you, for trusting me. I know facing down a fireball isn’t something that most people usually do together the day they meet.’

‘Normal is relative in Beacon Hills,’ Lydia replied. ‘Sympathetic magic, huh?’

‘I was surprised you knew what I meant so quickly.’

‘It’s the act of using something to simulate something else, something that it has a relationship with. The image of mistletoe, imbued with the powers of real mistletoe. Jennifer told us the story, once. About how the goddess Frigg asked everything in the world for a vow that they wouldn’t hurt her son, Balder. But she forgot about mistletoe, and Loki used it to kill him.’

Freya nodded, smiling like a proud teacher. ‘Exactly. You told me that mistletoe would disrupt the Darach’s spells, so that was my starting point.’

‘And you said that your aunt was beaten because you looked for help in unlikely places. So, like a seemingly defenseless teenage girl,’ Lydia replied, proud herself.

‘She would have underestimated you. And you said that your old teacher only told you that you were a banshee - so the full extent of your abilities would have been hidden to her as well.’

‘Excellent teamwork, if I do say so myself,’ Lydia said.

‘Do you think we knew, somehow? Back at the tree stump?’ Freya asked, but this time Lydia was a little more confused.

‘Knew what?’ 

‘That we were kindred spirits. The outsiders, the ones that don’t really fit. You have to admit, the similarities are more than coincidental.’

Lydia seemed to consider this for a second, and then nodded reluctantly. ‘Yeah, you’re partly right.’

Freya stopped, confused. ‘Oh really?’

Lydia stopped also, looking her newest friend in the eye. ‘It’s not that we’re the outsiders, or that we don’t fit in with our groups - we do. But we’re the ones that our enemies look at and dismiss, which is their mistake. Jennifer, the real Jennifer, said it herself actually.

‘We’re the overlooked. The ones that they don’t pay enough attention to, and then we turn out to be the biggest threat of all.’

Freya seemed to consider that for a moment, and came to the conclusion that she liked the description. ‘For centuries, my aunt underestimated me. Thought my powers were nothing, compared to hers. Tried to keep me away from my family. But together, we put her down for good. You’re right. There’s more to us than meets the eye.’

Lydia, however, looked downcast. 

‘What is it?’

She looked back towards the road that led into the parking lot, and then back at Freya. ‘Do you happen to know a spell that’ll repair my car? Otherwise, it’s a long walk back to Deaton’s.’


	9. Love Is A Battlefield

Liam could feel his blood boiling, and he didn’t like it. He’d worked hard to get his anger under control, especially with the added pressure of potentially wolfing out and hurting people to go alongside the usual breaking things and yelling at people that cared about him. 

But next to him, smiling insufferably and not even speaking, was Kol. And all Liam wanted to do was punch the stupid smile off his stupid face, and he didn’t even know why.

Maybe it was the air of arrogance. Maybe it was the cocksure way he walked, like he knew everything that was going to happen, and could handle anything that was thrown at him, which contrasted with Liam’s constant worry that he had no idea what he was doing. Maybe it was just the way he smiled.

‘Something wrong?’ Kol asked, the picture of innocence. Liam gritted his teeth and ignored him.

The pair had taken Liam’s car to the water treatment facility on the edge of town - the location of the Dread Doctors’ laboratories, as well as where the pack had finally defeated the Beast of Gevaudan. It now held a bucketload of horrible memories that Liam didn’t particularly want to relive - but this was where Freya’s map had sent them, and so here they were.

‘So what’s your deal, man?’ Liam asked. Maybe if he defused the mystery around Kol, got to know the guy underneath, he could look at him without wanting to deck him. Maybe. ‘I get you’re all, like, vampires or whatever.’

‘Vampires, or whatever?’ Kol mimicked, amused. ‘We Mikaelsons are much more complicated than that. Myself, especially.’

‘Why does that not surprise me?’ Liam asked. They had arrived at a gate, about eight feet tall and part of a metal fence that ringed the building and prevented access to the tunnels beneath. Usually it was open, and almost always unguarded, but at this time of night it was, understandably, closed.

Liam reached out and shoved as hard as he could, shattering the flimsy padlock that prevented the gate from opening. He slipped inside and turned to hold the gate open for Kol to follow, but he was already gone. He felt a tap on his shoulder, and spun back around to see Kol, smiling once again. He pointed up, and Liam understood; Kol had leaped over the fence before he had even broken the lock.

‘Show off,’ Liam snapped, and Kol grinned even wider.

‘Since you asked,’ Kol continued as they walked down the muddy slope towards the tunnel opening, which gaped up at them like a portal to another world (of which they’d already seen one tonight, so the image was fresh in both their minds), ‘I will regale you with the storied history of Kol Mikaelson.’

‘I wish I hadn’t now,’ Liam grumbled, balling his fists at his sides, but Kol barrelled on as if he hadn’t heard.

‘My mother was a witch - one of the most powerful I’ve ever met. She taught me a lot, when I was young. How to manipulate the elements, how to create objects of immense power, all the usual.’

‘That sounds anything but usual,’ Liam interjected.

‘Normal for a Mikaelson, at least. But that all changed, when we became vampires.’

‘You can’t be a vampire and a witch?’ Liam asked. Despite himself, he was curious. He hadn’t been a werewolf for that long, so there was still a lot that he didn’t know. Plus who knows how supernatural stuff worked in other dimensions?

Kol shook his head sadly. ‘Not usually, no. To be honest, it’s one of the few things about being human that I miss. Witches are inherently connected to nature - vampires are, at least according to nature, an abomination. So we lose our connection when we die and return. No more magic for me. Which isn’t to say that I don’t still have a vast knowledge of all things magical - you can still learn, even if you can’t practise.’

Liam’s brow creased in thought as he took this in. ‘Isn’t that like torturing yourself? You can learn all about magic, but you can’t actually do any of it.’

A small smile played about Kol’s lips. ‘Glutton for punishment, I am. In all forms. I spent the better part of a few centuries murdering my way across the world for fun.’

Liam felt himself edging away, suddenly uncomfortable to be in Kol’s presence. But the vampire either didn’t notice or didn’t care as he continued, ‘That all changed, however, when I met the little lady that I expect we’ll find in these godforsaken tunnels. Love does strange things to you.’

‘The girl, back at the Nemeton. She was there for you?’

‘Full of questions all of a sudden?’ Kol said defensively. Liam’s hackles raised, ready for an argument, or a fight, if Kol’s boasts about murder were true, but the vampire’s walls fell just as quickly as they had been erected. He sighed deeply before beginning again.

‘Davina Claire. The love of my very, very long life, and with the most magical potential I’ve seen since, well, my mother. She meant everything to me. I would have given up magic ten thousand times over to be with her. Taken from me far too early, thanks in no small part to my family. I thought I’d never see her again. This was not how I wanted to reunite.’

Liam’s thoughts went immediately to Hayden - still at work, still none the wiser as to the danger that threatened Beacon Hills. He thought about how he would feel if he lost her - if he would be able to survive. The rage that he felt when looking at Kol’s face seemed ill-placed now, and he could feel it seeping away. 

This guy was anything but confident. This was a guy in pain, doing anything he could to stop the world at large from noticing - a guy who had lost so much, and yet was still marching on. Liam thought of Scott next, how he soldiered on despite losing both Allison and Kira. He admired Scott, although he’d never say the words out loud. So how could he do anything but the same for Kol?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said lamely. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘No, of course not,’ Kol said dismissively. ‘I don’t even know why I’m telling you. But if we’re to fight side by side, there’s really no point fighting with one another. I’ve tried that before, fighting with my family while fighting alongside them, and it doesn’t end well. But, as interesting as I am, you should tell me about yourself, too.’ 

‘What for?’

‘Quid pro quo, mostly,’ Kol said, shrugging. ‘I told you mine, now you tell me yours.’

Liam snorted derisively, but the fact that Kol had in fact opened up to him made him feel a little less embarrassed to do the same.

‘I have...anger issues,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been kicked out of schools, been in trouble with the police. And then Scott bit me, and I had to learn how to control being a werewolf as well as my temper. It wasn’t easy. It’s still not.’

‘Understandable,’ Kol said. ‘Control has never been my strong suit either. Not that I tried very hard, before...’

‘And now Scott’s getting ready to go to college, and I’ve gotta learn how to be the alpha as well as just being Liam, and being a good boyfriend, and I dunno if I’m ready for all that responsibility, you know? And I don’t want to let anyone down, either.’

Kol gave him a knowing smile. ‘You sound just like my brother Elijah when he was younger. Never wanting to disappoint, never wanting to fail. But life doesn’t work like that, I can tell you from a lot of experience. You’ll fail. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll let people down. But the fact that you care - that’s what will get you through. People won’t care that you’ve failed - they’ll care that you tried. That’s something I’ve learned, since...since meeting Davina.’

‘We’re here,’ Liam said, changing the subject. What Kol was saying was making a dangerous amount of sense, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with that just yet. They now stood on the threshold of the water treatment tunnels, the stench of cleaning chemicals and water purification tanks drifting through the air. ‘Truce, then?’

‘Truce, little werewolf,’ Kol said, extending a hand. The pair shook, and descended the ramp into the mouth of the tunnel, feeling as if they were walking into the depths of hell.

*********

The tunnels were oppressive, claustrophobic, and stunk to the high heavens. They were the type of place Kol would never have chosen to spend time if he could avoid it. And yet here he was, a tiny little ball of werewolf rage at his side, and the smell of stagnant water assailing his senses.

‘I assume some bad things happened down here,’ he asked, holding a hand over his nose. ‘Those creatures that The Glutton summoned only head to places with high concentrations of supernatural energy.’

'We stopped one of the most powerful werewolves in the world down here once,’ Liam said, so nonchalantly that Kol initially thought he was joking. But when a punchline didn’t arrive, he raised an eyebrow. Maybe these children didn’t deserve to be underestimated after all.

‘That giant black monstrosity?’ he guessed, and Liam nodded. 

‘It’s called the Beast of Gevaudan. It possessed my best friend, and killed loads of people. But we stopped it. We saved Mason. I thought we’d never see it again.’

‘Rest assured, at least, that the version of this Beast that is no doubt stalking us through these charming tunnels is only a shade of the original, with only a fraction of its power. Even just the two of us should be enough to take it down.’

‘I guess that’s my cue,’ said a voice; a voice that sent a chill down Liam’s spine. At the end of the hallway they had just turned into was a man, handsome but somewhat unremarkable. He wouldn’t have warranted a second look in a crowd, except for the aura of danger that hung around him, as if his every movement was full of lethal potential.

He spoke with a French accent, and regarded both Liam and Kol with a sadistic grin. ‘Before you leap to attack me, I believe there is something you should see. Or, rather, someone.’ Without waiting for an answer, the man walked slowly out of sight, as if he were merely walking to the store.

Liam and Kol set off at a run towards the corner the man had vanished around. 

‘Who was that?’ Kol asked, and Liam answered through gritted teeth, the very act of saying the man’s name sending waves of fury through him.

‘His name’s Sebastien Valet. He’s the human form of the Beast. He’s a sick, murdering psychopath.’

‘I’ve been one of those before, I know what they look like,’ Kol said, ‘and that man most definitely qualifies. I’ll enjoy tearing him apart.’

The pair rounded the corner and found themselves in a wide open room, a part of the facility that even Liam had never seen before.

Through the centre of the room ran a rushing river of water, either on its way into the facility for purification or back out to feed Beacon Hills, Liam couldn’t tell. A metal gangway spanned the river, and large chemical tanks lined the walls, with a bank of monitors and other important looking equipment at either end.

But neither Liam nor Kol had eyes for anything in the room except the two people suspended below the gangway, inches away from the raging waters and certain death.

Both Hayden and Davina were bound by their wrists, not sure whether to wriggle to escape and risk the water below, or stay still and face their deaths with dignity. When they caught the eyes of their rescuers, they both began to yell.

‘Liam! Oh my god, Liam, get me out of here!’

‘Kol! Is that you? Kol, please!’

Above them, standing in the centre of the gangway, was Valet. He held his hand high, showing the new arrivals the large black claws that now tipped his fingers. ‘Come any closer, and the females die,’ he said with as much finality as the grave.

'What do we do?’ Liam asked, but Kol didn’t know. Even at his top speed, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to get to Valet before he cut the bindings holding the girls. And if he was as strong as Liam said, would he even be able to stop him if he did?

‘Stall,’ he replied, then shouted over the roar of the river towards Valet, ‘What do you want? What do we have to do so that you let them go?’

‘Let them go?’ Valet taunted. ‘Oh, one of them will die, whatever happens. My proposal is this.’ He pointed in turn to Liam and Kol, and sneered. ‘You will fight each other. To the death. And whoever wins gets to leave with their love. The other, falls into the water to join their lover in the afterlife.’

‘Valet! We’re meant to be working together!’ Davina called from below the bridge, but Valet just rolled his eyes.

‘We both know that you are special, my dear. A witch’s soul is very useful for The Glutton - you’re as close to the original Davina as our friend Kol here is ever going to get again.’

‘That’s not true,’ Kol said, more to himself than anyone else. ‘That’s not Davina, it can’t be.’

‘But can you take the risk, and lose her twice?’ Valet asked, faux-innocence in his voice.

‘You’re sick!’ Liam shouted, but Kol held him back with one firm hand as he attempted to rush Valet.

‘We have no choice,’ Kol whispered. ‘But there’s a way out of this. We can rescue everyone, and stop Valet. We just have to play along for now. Can you do that?’

Liam glared at Kol, wondering what was running through his head. Would Kol betray him, all to save Davina? And, more importantly, would he betray Kol to save Hayden?

No. He couldn’t. He’d never be able to look her in the eye again. Or Scott. He couldn’t do that. And if Davina had changed Kol as much as he claimed, then surely he couldn’t either. So he would have to trust the vampire, and hope that it was the right move.

It was definitely what Scott would do.

‘Alright. We’ll play it your way,’ Liam said, ‘for now.’

‘Excellent,’ Kol said, and then he grabbed Liam by the throat and hoisted him into the air, dark veins pulsing across his face as his eyes transformed, as if they were filling with ink. He bared his fangs and Liam felt his fingers begin to constrict.

He had been wrong after all.

*********

Colours danced across Liam’s vision, as Kol’s vice-like grip tightened, cutting off the oxygen to his brain. He flicked his fingers, one last ditch move swimming to the front of his mind. His own claws extended, and he plunged them into Kol’s forearm.

The vampire’s grip instantly released and Liam dropped to the floor, rolling away as he fought to regain his breath.

On the gangway, Valet clapped his hands with delight. ‘This is more like it! Why kill people when you can get them to kill each other? Much more productive.’

Liam rolled to his feet, his own fangs now protruding from his mouth to match Kol’s. He roared and sprang, kicking off of a wall for an acrobatic strike across his opponent’s jaw as his legs scissored through the air.

Kol went down, hard, and Liam pounced on top of him, slicing his claws left and right in a flurry of movement that tore through clothes and flesh. Kol yelled in pain and kicked out, dislodging the little werewolf before retreating across the room.

Liam recovered much quicker this time, the scent of blood on his claws. What was Kol thinking? Would he have to kill Kol in order to stop him? The rush of adrenaline, coupled with Liam’s own unbridled fury was blocking out reasonable thought, and soon all he could think about was survival. For himself, and for Hayden.

Liam rushed again, but ran straight into a kick imbued with vampiric strength and flew back just as quickly. Kol sped across the room, grabbing Liam around the throat once more and slamming him against a chemical tank. But this time, there was no pressure. Kol’s back was to Valet, and his face had returned to normal.

‘We had to make it look realistic,’ he said apologetically, and without another word he spun around and threw Liam as hard as he could towards the gangway.

Liam spun in mid-air, landing on coiled legs and sliding across the slick metal, only inches away from Valet. 

‘Get away, child! Or I will kill your precious Hayden!’ Valet bellowed, but Liam had done his job. Valet had turned away from Kol, who now sped across the room and tackled him to the ground.

They rolled across the gangway, a flail of limbs and snarling faces. Kol’s voice called back, ‘Get the girls!’ before he was drowned out by a bellow of rage from Valet.

Liam didn’t need to be told twice. He reached down to grab the rope holding Hayden, to try and pull her back up, but it was like touching air. The rope was immaterial, smoke and mirrors.

‘What the hell?’ He tried again, with the same result, and even attempted to grab the rope holding Davina. There was no difference. 

‘Liam! Oh my god, Liam, get me out of here!’ Hayden called again.

‘Kol! Is that you? Kol, please!’ Davina shouted, with exactly the same inflections as before.

They had been duped.

‘Kol! It’s all a trick! Hayden and Davina, they’re not real!’ Liam shouted, standing up to rejoin the battle only to be knocked to the floor by Kol, who collided with him at top speed.

'He’s a strong one,’ Kol admitted, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth and helping Liam to his feet. ‘So, if he doesn’t have our girls, there’s no reason to hold back any more, I assume?’

'Definitely not,’ Liam agreed. 

Valet stood at the end of the gangway, dusting his clothes down as if he had been mildly inconvenienced and not attacked by an Original vampire. ‘You mean you were holding back, child? Then, by all means, give me everything you have. I can guarantee that it will not be enough.’

Liam started as an inky black smoke seemed to appear from nowhere. It enveloped Valet, and within seconds replaced the pompous Frenchman with an eight foot tall, hulking werewolf. Teeth filled its mouth to the brim, and wicked claws tipped the ends of its heavily muscled arms and legs. It seemed to smile at them, murder in its eyes.

Kol and Liam exchanged a glance, and faced their foe. Together, the werewolf and the vampire charged at the Beast Of Gevaudan, determined to take it down once and for all.

*********

Two on one was always good odds, Kol reasoned. They may have been facing an enormous monster, but there were still two of them, and one of it. He ducked under the wide swing of the creature’s massive arms, stopping a blow towards his face with a quick double-palmed strike to its forearm.

Liam kicked out at the Beast’s legs, hoping to unbalance it, but then had to roll quickly to the side to avoid a stomp that would have shattered his ribcage. One of his arms dangled down over the gangway, water splashing up and inviting him to jump in, let it wash him away from all this madness. He shook himself and sprang back to his feet, dismissing the thought. 

The illusions of Hayden and Davina continued to call out for help at regular intervals, but now both Kol and Liam blocked them from their ears.

‘We can’t win this, he’s too strong!’ Kol shouted, loathe as he was to admit it. He punched the Beast as hard as he could in the face, all of his supernatural strength behind the blow, but it almost seemed to laugh, chest heaving, instead of flinching away from the impact. ‘How did you kill it before?’

‘We didn’t!’ Liam shouted back, grabbing Kol by the arm and pulling him out of the way of one of the Beast’s deadly claws. ‘Our friend Lydia used her banshee powers and pulled Mason out of him, so he couldn’t manifest in our world anymore. Without a host, the Beast just fell apart!’

‘Not really an option this time around,’ Kol said tersely. ‘In that case, we’ll have to get a bit more creative. Follow my lead.’

Without waiting for Liam’s acknowledgement, Kol renewed his assault at supernatural speed, landing elbow strikes and snap kicks that bounced off as if he had thrown cotton balls at the Beast instead. But the rain of blows kept the creature off-guard - it couldn’t retaliate if it didn’t know where its attacker would be.

It roared in frustration, driving its claws through the air as if it were trying to tear reality itself as Freya’s spells had earlier that day. It was only at a distance that Liam realised what Kol was trying to do.

‘Now!’ Kol yelled, rematerializing as he slowed down enough for Liam to see him. The Beast towered above him, Kol leaning heavily on the railing, clearly out of breath from his exertions. It raised its claws for a killing blow, and Liam made his move. 

The Beast lunged forward, ready to slice through Kol as if he were tissue paper. But Kol was no longer there.

Instead, he and Liam were behind the enormous creature - and now it was exactly where they wanted it; off-balance, and lunging towards the railings. The flimsy, metal railings.

Liam snapped off a spinning kick, trainers slipping on the damp metal, planting a foot in the small of the Beast’s back. It was enough - the creature toppled forward, too large to stop its own momentum. It fell into the railing, which crumpled under its enormous weight, and over the side of the gangway into the rushing waters below, its final cries unheard over the spray closing over its head.

‘If my friend were here, he’d say that that was intense,’ Liam said, bending over and breathing heavily, hands on his knees. ‘You were amazing, dude. I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.’

‘Being a vampire may have stopped me being a witch, but it did come with its perks,’ Kol admitted, wiping a hand across his brow. ‘You owe me a new shirt, too,’ he added, indicating the shredded piece of cloth that now barely covered his torso.

‘I don’t know, I like it like that,’ said another voice - and this time it was Kol’s spine that tingled at the sound.

‘I’m getting tired of all these surprises.’ Kol turned towards the voice to see Davina perched on top of one of the computer consoles, legs crossed and as beautiful as the day he had lost her. But of course, this wasn’t Davina, as much as the Davina that even now hung below them wasn’t Davina.

Following his gaze, this new Davina realised what he was thinking. She waved a hand and the illusions of Hayden and herself disappeared, along with the imaginary ropes holding them.

‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Now we’re all alone.’

‘Uh, I’m still here,’ Liam added, raising a hand awkwardly. Davina glared, as if he had interrupted an extremely romantic moment.

‘You can be quiet while I talk to Kol.’

Kol, to his credit, didn’t miss a beat. ‘I have nothing to say to you. You’re not Davina. Everything Valet said was a lie. So, the real question is, am I going to have to snap your neck, or are you going to just disappear quietly?’

Davina smiled, and it was a smile Kol had never seen her smile before. It was cruel and self-entitled, as if she were the only person in the world that mattered, which was never a thought that crossed the real Davina’s mind.

‘I’m going to kill you, silly boy. And then I’m going to conjure my own Kol, one that’ll be devoted to me for all eternity. One that will watch the world burn with me. That could have been you, you know. But if you’re going to fight me, then I guess I’ll have to make my own boyfriend.’

Liam stepped up beside Kol, unsure where his place was in this argument. ‘Dude, what do we do? You know she’s not real, right?’

‘Of course I know,’ Kol snapped. ‘But that doesn’t make this any easier. I’ve threatened Davina, the real Davina before. I’ve hurt her. So you’d think having to kill a pretend version would be easy. But it’s not.’

‘I get it,’ Liam said, and the certainty in his voice made Kol stop. ‘I hurt my friends before. Someone manipulated me. Made me think that the only way to save Hayden was by killing Scott. I know how hard it is. But this isn’t Davina. This is just some pale imitation. The real Davina wouldn’t want you to get hung up on this - and she wouldn’t care if you killed this one.’

‘I am right here,’ Davina said, indignant. ‘Don’t talk about killing me like I’m not even here.’

‘And if you can’t do it,’ Liam said, resolve etched into every line of his face, ‘then I’ll do it for you. No one should have to live with that if they don’t think they can handle it.’

‘Wait!’ Kol shouted, but Liam was already moving. He sprang across the gangway, claws aimed at Davina and fangs gnashing. She screamed, raising a hand in defense, and Liam bounced off of a protection sphere, landing with a crash in a heap at her feet.

Kol wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t let Liam get hurt. He had to stop Davina. He had to do something. 

And then he saw Davina’s eyes, the anger and rage that were reflected there as she raised a hand to deal a killing blow to the crumpled werewolf, and he knew then - there was no trace of the real Davina here. It was, as Liam said, a pale imitation. Because the real Davina would never look like that. Would never act that way. Would never take pleasure in the pain of another.

He raced across the gangway for the final time and grabbed her raised hand around the wrist, stopping her from completing her spell. Her pulse was quick under his fingers, and she wretched hard to the side, trying to free herself from Kol’s grip.

‘Let go! You won’t hurt me; let me kill him and we can finally be together!’

‘I hope that that’s true, one day,’ Kol said, and lowered his head to Davina’s neck, plunging his fangs into her flesh and tearing, like a lion ripping into its prey. Dark smoke filled his mouth, and he spat quickly, Davina’s body dropping from his grasp. She disintegrated as she fell, a look of shock and betrayal in her eyes the last thing Kol saw.

He turned away, desperate to keep his emotions in check. Liam limped up to his side, and touched him lightly on the arm. Kol wanted to tear himself away, rip himself from life and death and all the Mikaelson drama. He wanted to rip Liam in half, wanted to tear and rend and drink his blood like a gloriously aged wine.

But he would not. That wasn’t him anymore. He didn’t run from his problems. He didn’t kill people for fun...that often. Davina wouldn’t want him to do that. The real Davina.

‘Dude, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to do that. Not to the girl you love.’

‘It wasn’t her,’ Kol said, and voicing the thought out loud made it more real, made what he had just done more bearable. ‘It wasn’t real,’ he repeated.

‘Let’s get out of here. Once we’re outside I’ll call Scott, and see where we’re supposed to go next.’ Liam looked at Kol’s face, the anguish that had taken hold of him, and felt his own heart breaking just a little for him. ‘And I need to call Hayden. I just need to hear her voice right now.’ 

The mention of Hayden made Kol want to rage again - how dare this child get to be happy, to have his love, when he himself was deprived of it? But it wasn’t Liam’s fault. It wasn’t even his family’s fault for taking Davina away in the first place. And there could still be a way to get her back. He could investigate, when he returned to his own dimension. 

But for now, they had The Glutton to deal with.

Liam was struck as they walked back through the tunnels by how much he and Kol had in common. How fighting alongside someone could be more of a bonding exercise than anything else. He was reminded of when he and Theo had fought the Ghost Riders together - how they had managed to overcome a lot of their differences, at least for a while, in the same way.

But he knew how Kol was feeling, almost. What he was struggling with. The rage inside, the love that helped keep it in check. How he and the vampire both had changed when they had found the ones that they loved.

Maybe that had been why he wanted to punch Kol in the first place - he had reminded Liam so much of himself.

Kol, for his part, spent the rest of the journey back to the surface in silence, the image of the fake Davina replaying over and over in his mind. He knew she wasn’t real. He kept repeating that in his head, hoping that eventually it would sink in and the vision would stop tormenting him. He was grateful, he realised, for Liam’s presence.

The little werewolf was a reminder of how far he had come. How he was trying to be better, and how easy it could be to slip back into old habits without Davina around to help him curtail them. He was impressed with how well Liam had acquitted himself, both in battle and in helping him realise what was true and what wasn’t.

One day, Kol thought, Liam would make a good leader. He resolved to mention that to Scott when they saw each other again, to tell him how valuable an ally his friend truly was.

And so the youngest werewolf and the deadliest Original, a newfound bond of kinship between them, left the tunnels of the water treatment facility in triumph, if not undamaged, and full of a newfound appreciation for the ones that they loved, and how they had changed their lives for the better. Hopefully it would be enough to see them through the final battle, and beyond.


	10. Bonds

For the second time that night, the five Mikaelsons and the five members of the McCall pack crowded into the operating theatre of Doctor Deaton’s veterinary surgery. In contrast to their earlier meeting however, they were much more intermingled this time compared to before. 

Kol and Liam seemed far more united, and there wasn’t a single dirty look between them. Lydia and Freya were deep in conversation about the intricacies of magic, while Klaus and Scott seemed to be comparing notes on battle strategy, as well as what it meant to be the leader of a pack of werewolves (Scott had better tips than Klaus, much to Klaus’ chagrin). Malia and Elijah both stood in cool silence, but there was no hostility between them either, where earlier that day the air had been supercharged with tension. Even Rebekah and Stiles were standing far more relaxed than before - and Stiles hadn’t glanced at Rebekah even once since their return.

With the pack and the Originals reunited, Klaus called the meeting to order with a swift bang on the operating table. ‘It appears from the fact that we’re all here together again that we were all victorious against our foes.’

‘Nice job, everyone,’ Scott chimed in. The Mikaelsons all tensed - they knew that interrupting Klaus when he was speechifying was usually a good way to get yourself scolded, but Klaus merely inclined his head towards the young man. They breathed a collective sigh of relief, and Klaus continued.

‘But it seems that, even with its minions defeated, we are no closer to stopping The Glutton. Did anyone see any sign of the foul creature while they were searching? Anything at all that would signify where it is hiding?’

Everyone glanced at those around them, but nothing sprang to mind. The Glutton had simply vanished, it seemed.

‘Let’s go over what we know again,’ Lydia said. ‘Between the ten of us, I’m sure we can work out where it’s hiding, or what its next move is.’

‘We know that my magic can’t track it - and with all of the phantoms vanquished, there’s nothing of them left for us to track either. Which means we’re back to the old fashioned way,’ Freya said, starting off the discussion.

‘Does it feel like it sent all its little fakes out on suicide missions to anyone else?’ This was Stiles, detective mode activated yet again. ‘Like, it paired up the villains we personally defeated, so there was almost no way they were going to win where they lost before, right?’

‘That’s overestimating ourselves a little, don’t you think?’ Malia asked, but Elijah nodded next to her.

‘No, Mr Stilinski is correct; if The Glutton truly wanted to defeat us, it would have taken us off-guard, pitted us against foes we were less used to. Instead, we all fought the people we were best equipped to defeat.’

‘So, was it all just a distraction?’ Liam asked. ‘Just trying to keep us out of the way?’

Kol stepped forward, catching Freya’s attention. ‘This thing, The Glutton - it drains magic and gets stronger, yes?’

‘Yes, that’s why it targeted all those places that Scott and his friends fought at before - the high concentrations of magical energy.’

‘But there’s an even stronger place than all of them put together. Freya’s spell sent it across dimensions to find the strongest magical energy it could, and that’s exactly what it did,’ Scott realised. ‘Guys, we’ve looking in the wrong place the whole time. The Glutton’s still at the Nemeton!’

Klaus snapped his fingers. ‘Of course. The entire night has been a misdirection - to keep us away from the one place it needed to make itself as powerful as possible. Our path is clear. We must return to that accursed tree stump and end this once and for all.’

‘No objections here,’ Scott said. ‘Everyone ready?’

He looked to his pack, to his best friends, and was met with four determined nods in response. Klaus did the same, and the Mikaelsons met his resolve with their own.

‘One final battle,’ Klaus said. ‘Let us make a swift end of this.’

*********

‘Are we sure we can do this?’ Stiles asked, as he pulled Roscoe onto the side of the road, letting the rest of the pack (and Freya, who didn’t fancy another super-speed journey) disembark. The Mikaelson vampires arrived seconds later, vampiric speed bringing them to a gentle stop next to the Jeep.

‘We don’t have a choice,’ Malia told him. ‘It’s a smokey pregnant monster. I think we got this.’

‘Malia’s right, we don’t have a choice,’ Scott confirmed. ‘If we don’t stop this thing then the walls of reality are going to rupture, and everyone’s going to die. Everything we’ve done already today will be for nothing.’

Klaus walked up, shaking his head. ‘My family and I have faced much worse than this and triumphed. I’m sure your pack has done the same, given what we have seen of your enemies tonight. Together, I don’t believe this creature will stand a chance.’

‘All the same, I wish I had more than just a baseball bat,’ Stiles mourned. 

Rebekah flashed him a toothy grin. ‘If we had time, I could turn you into a vampire if you wanted,’ she offered. 

Stiles gulped comically and backed away, shaking his head and covering his neck with his free hand. ‘No, that’s fine, thanks anyway.’

‘The Nemeton should be that way,’ Lydia pointed, ‘do we have some kind of strategy? I thought Freya said this thing couldn’t be stopped by normal means.’

‘I’ve got an idea, but it’ll all depend on what state The Glutton is in when we get there. When I give the word, you’ll know what to do.’

‘Cryptic as ever, sister,’ Klaus scolded playfully. ‘But it won’t come to that. I’ll tear this creature apart with my bare hands, myths and legends be damned.’

‘You remember what happened when it touched me,’ Elijah cautioned. ‘Glancing blows, at the most - stay out of close proximity as much as you can. We don’t want anyone ending up on the menu.’

The two groups began to walk towards the forest’s edge, but Scott hung back. The others turned back to face him, curiosity and impatience in equal measure on their faces.

‘If something does go wrong,’ he said, and as multiple people began to tell him that it wouldn’t, he continued over the top of them, ‘I just want to say that I don’t blame you guys for sending that thing here. You were just trying to protect yourselves, and the people you loved. I get that. I think we all do.’

The rest of the pack nodded, looking to each Mikaelson in turn.

‘And it took guts to own your mistake and come here to fix it. To walk into a strange place and put your faith in a bunch of teenagers you’d never met to help you. So I just want to say, and I think everyone here will agree, that it’s been really great to meet you all. We all have a lot more in common than we thought - and maybe one day we’ll meet again, and it won’t take some kind of crazy crisis threatening all of reality to make it happen.’

Klaus took up the speech, joining Scott to address the assembled Mikaelsons and pack members. ‘Scott is correct, and I believe all of we Mikaelsons echo his sentiments. This was our fault, there is no denying that, and you did not have to help us. And yet you opened up to us, told us all of your secrets and showed us the places that meant the most to you, for better or worse. Without your aid, we would not be in the position we are in now.

‘And yes, there was animosity between us to begin with. I don’t think any of us was pleased to have to work with the others. And yet, in a short space of time, we have become much closer as a group. The lines between Mikaelson and McCall pack have blurred - and I am proud to stand alongside all of you in this last confrontation; not as a pack, or a family, but something else. Something different. Something better.’

‘‘The bands of black must intertwine, with those bonded always and forever’,’ Lydia repeated. ‘I’d say that part of the prophecies has definitely come true.’

‘Let’s do this,’ Scott said, finally. 

With nothing more left to say, three vampires, a hybrid, a witch, a banshee, two werewolves, a werecoyote, and a human with a baseball bat marched in silence through the trees towards the Nemeton, ready to face down their common enemy for the final time.

*********

As soon as the Nemeton was in sight, everyone could tell that something was wrong. There was a wrongness to the very air, as if it were toxic to breathe, and there was a bright light shining through the trees, a writhing mass of energy that arced with multi-coloured tendrils and seemed to be growing bigger by the second resting just above the tree stump.

‘Freya?’ Elijah asked, as the group split apart, fanning out into a crescent to advance.

‘It’s magical energy,’ she said, shielding her eyes from the brightness. ‘Massively concentrated magical energy. I don’t understand, this shouldn’t be happening!’

A cracking noise drew their attention away from the ball of energy, and another figure joined the assembled group, stepping around the Nemeton on bare feet.

It was a beautiful woman, raven hair stretching far down her back, skin pale in contrast like something out of a fairy tale. She had a kind, motherly face, and her hands rested lightly on an enormously distended stomach, as if she were carrying a full term pregnancy and was ready to go into labour at any second. Instead of clothes, dark smoke drifted around her, covering her modesty and fanning out behind her like a cloak.

‘Is that...The Glutton?’ Kol asked, understandably incredulous.

‘She got a makeover while we were away,’ Liam said, eyes wide, unsure where to look.

‘Welcome,’ said the woman, in a rasping voice that didn’t seem to suit the rest of her outward appearance. ‘And thank you.’

‘We don’t want your thanks, we want you gone!’ Klaus retorted, but the woman merely smiled kindly, as if he were a rude child.

She opened her arms wide, as if she were embracing the entire world. ‘But I must thank you. Without the ten of you, this would never have come to be.’

‘Explain yourself,’ Elijah snapped. ‘And give us one good reason why we shouldn’t just tear you apart right now.’

The woman looked scandalized, as if Elijah had sworn in polite company. She recovered quickly, and placed one hand on the pulsating ball of energy which was now slowly rotating over the Nemeton. The tree stump, now that they were closer, seemed to be rotting as they observed it, grey veins of decay spreading across it like a disease.

‘I sent my phantoms to gather energy for my...appetite,’ The Glutton rasped, patting her stomach with the other hand. ‘And they did their jobs admirably. And then you destroyed them, each in turn. From myself were they created, and to myself did they return - energy in tow. Which has given me the ability to communicate for the first time in centuries. And I’m sure my appearance is much more appealing to you now, which allows you to regard true beauty before I devour you.’

The agony on Scott’s face would have been enough to reduce another person to tears as he realised what The Glutton was insinuating. ‘You mean, we’ve been helping you all night? We thought we were stopping you, but instead we just made you stronger?’

The Glutton smiled her motherly smile again and nodded emphatically. ‘If my phantoms had killed you, they could have returned of their own volition. But their deaths worked in my favour just as well. There was really nothing you could have done to stop me from gathering this enormous amount of energy.’

‘And what do you plan on doing with it?’ Rebekah asked, scared to hear the answer.

‘I will feast of course. And then I will be strong enough to tear reality itself, and feast on the walls between dimensions - the most succulent of all delicacies.’

‘And once you’ve destroyed everything, what then? When there’s nothing left for you to eat?’ Stiles asked, spinning his bat futilely in his hand.

‘Then I will be all that is, and all that was, and all that ever will be. I will need to do nothing ever again.’

‘You’re sick,’ Liam snarled. ‘You’re just destruction for destruction’s sake. There’s nothing more to you than that.’

The Glutton looked confused for the first time. ‘What more is there than that? I feast to survive. I survive by feasting. Everything is for me to feast on. Even your lives are mine to gorge on, if I see fit.’

‘Who gave you the right? Who said that you’re allowed to just eat whatever you want, with no regard for anyone else?’ This was from Malia, who seemed to be wrestling with herself, barely stopping herself from running forward and attacking The Glutton head-on.

‘I do not need permission from food. Do you ask your breakfast if it is happy to be eaten? I think not.’ The Glutton replied simply.

‘Pretty sure my cornflakes aren’t alive when I eat them,’ Stiles observed.

‘So you’re delusional as well,’ Klaus said to the woman. ‘How wonderful. I’ve heard enough, don’t you agree Scott?’

Scott nodded, and flicked out his claws. ‘We’ve got to stop her - one way or another.’

‘You can certainly try,’ The Glutton challenged, a hard edge creeping into her voice and her eyebrows knitting together in anger.

‘Stiles, you stay here, help Freya do whatever it is she needs to do. Everyone else, let’s go!’ Scott ordered, and there were no complaints as the eight of them charged towards the woman who literally held the fate of all worlds in her hands.

*********

Freya knelt down, hands clasped together as she began to chant, eyes closed, trying to block out the battle raging around her. She could feel Stiles’ presence, his bat now raised and ready to swing. Things were even more dire than she had thought - the idea had been developing since she saw her family and the pack together, how close they had grown in such a short time, and now her last ditch effort was the only thing she could think of that could combat The Glutton and its immense power. The immense power that they, in their foolishness, had allowed it to amass.

Scott and Klaus, as true leaders should, were the first ones to reach The Glutton. She barely moved as Scott leapt over Klaus’ head to slice at the woman’s face. His claws barely made a dent, and she grasped his wrist as he flew towards her, using his momentum against him to throw him across the clearing into a tree with a loud thud.

Klaus filled the space, fangs flashing towards The Glutton’s now exposed throat. It was like biting solid steel, and Klaus recoiled as quickly as he had struck. The Glutton backhanded him away as if he were no more than a fly, and began to step forward daintily, leaves withering as she trod on them.

‘She’s going for Freya! Keep her away, at any cost!’ Elijah yelled, as he, Malia, Liam, and Kol all struck at once from different angles. The Glutton barely even seemed to notice them, waving her hands at rapid speed to deflect all of their blows without even flinching. She grasped Malia by the hair, ignoring her screams of protest, and swung her like a baseball bat, taking out the Liam and the two Original vampires along with her.

‘My turn,’ Lydia said, breathing in deeply. Rebekah darted in front of her, snapping off a series of kicks towards The Glutton’s enormous stomach. Against any other foe, she would never have resorted to something so below the belt, but this was a literal life or death situation and so she had no qualms about it, for all the good it did her. 

The Glutton’s stomach seemed to pulse with light, and sent Rebekah spinning backwards instead, her blows not even connecting. But she had bought Lydia enough time and, as she looked up from the leaf-strewn ground, she saw the banshee scream.

Lydia’s powerful voice exploded out of her throat, a column of air that could shatter steel directed straight at The Glutton itself. The Glutton smiled wide, wider, and wider still until her mouth opened inhumanly wide, inhaling the scream and all of its magical energy like she would a plate of spaghetti. She licked her lips and pushed Lydia aside, marching onwards towards Freya, now almost unimpeded.

‘I don’t usually hit girls,’ Stiles said, hoping his bravado was enough armour against whatever The Glutton was about to throw at him. She blinked at him, as if only just registering that the little human was standing in her way. He screwed his eyes shut and swung as hard as he could.

When he opened his eyes tentatively, he saw half of his bat clatter harmlessly to the floor of the forest, and the other half hanging uselessly in his hand. The Glutton didn’t even bother to attack him, merely walking around him towards Freya.

‘Hey! Rude!’ Stiles said, throwing his shattered bat to the floor and his body between The Glutton and the still-crouching witch.

‘Move, child. Or meet your doom even quicker than planned.’

‘I have a problem with people telling me what to do,’ Stiles snapped back. ‘I kind of always do the opposite.’

‘Then do not move.’

‘Nice try, but reverse psychology doesn’t work either. I’m stubborn like that.’

The Glutton frowned, clearly unsure as to why this child was standing in her way. ‘You possess no magical ability. There is no reason for you to impede me. There is nothing you can do to stop me. Why do you not flee, enjoy what little remains of your life before I destroy your entire dimension?’

‘Told you,’ Stiles said. ‘Stubborn.’

‘So be it,’ The Glutton said, and her hand moved faster than Stiles could see, striking him across the face and sending him sprawling into the dirt. It was like being hit by a dump truck - and he had been hit by Derek Hale before, so Stiles knew what he was talking about.

Finally, The Glutton stood over Freya, who was still crouching, eyes closed, deep in concentration. The woman’s mouth opened wide again, wider than ever before, as if she was going to devour Freya whole. She leaned forward, enormous stomach making the movement awkward. She was inches from the top of Freya’s head, when a blur shot through the air and moved her out of reach.

‘No one eats my sister,’ Klaus said, still in awe as to the peculiar sentences that his life often had him uttering.

‘At least, not without her permission,’ Kol added. Klaus rolled his eyes. Even in the midst of battle, Kol could be vulgar.

The Glutton turned to them both, looking exasperated. ‘You are prolonging the inevitable. Give in, and it will be a swift end.’

‘I’ve said that before myself,’ Klaus said. ‘I’ve never meant it, either.’

Struggling to their feet and in various states of disrepair after their assault on The Glutton, the remaining Mikaelsons and Scott’s pack united behind Klaus and the still kneeling Freya, whose eyes suddenly snapped open.

‘Now!’ she shouted, standing triumphantly. ‘Form a circle, same groups as before. Keep The Glutton contained!’ She held out her now unclasped hands, and grasped the hands that soon arrived there as hard as she could.

‘What are you doing? This is futile,’ The Glutton observed, but there was a quaver in her voice - the beginnings of fear.

Within seconds, The Glutton was encircled by the united Mikaelson/McCall pack group, all holding hands and facing towards her with defiance in their eyes.

Freya, Lydia, Kol, Liam, Klaus, Scott, Rebekah, Stiles, Elijah, Malia, and then back to Freya again. As soon as the circle was complete, Freya released the spell she had been holding within her, and it raced around the connection like a golden loop, joining the ten of them together.

‘Freya! What are you doing?’ Klaus asked uncertainly. 

‘Just hold still, and don’t let go of anyone’s hands!’

The ball of energy above the Nemeton began to writhe in the air, tendrils lancing out with more and more frequency, until it lifted itself from the tree stump and began to hover over The Glutton like the Sword of Damocles, ready to drop. One thin connection remained, joining the energy ball to the Nemeton like a mystical umbilical cord. The spinning of the ball whipped up the leaves of the clearing, and the wind roared louder than ever, accompanied by the electrical crack of the magical energy.

‘Whatever you do, don’t let go!’ Freya yelled again. The Glutton spun on the spot, unsure of what to do next, and then the ball of energy unleashed a final ten tendrils, each striking a member of the circle - and everything went white.

*********

The pack and the Mikaelsons all blinked rapidly, looking around at each other. They were in an enormous white space, with no discernable end in sight - it stretched away to the horizons and off into infinity. They tentatively released each other, looking down at the centre of their circle - where The Glutton had been before, now the Nemeton stood on the white, featureless floor.

‘Freya…’ Elijah began warily, and Freya took charge as soon as he broke the silence.

‘We don’t have much time,’ she began. ‘We’ve got one shot at this, and if it doesn’t work, I am totally out of ideas.’

‘An explanation, please, dear sister,’ Klaus said dangerously. ‘Where are we, and what do you need us to do?’

‘I’m getting there, Klaus. You all know that the Nemeton is a repository of magical power. The biggest we’ve ever encountered, in our world or this one. And the tree stump you can see here, is the lock.’

‘Are you saying we need to open this thing up?’ Stiles asked. ‘Because the last time we messed with this thing, we attracted a hell of a lot of supernatural nastiness to Beacon Hills, so I think we’d all like to avoid that.’

‘The Glutton has already cracked the doorway. We’re going to throw the door wide open, shove her through it, and then slam it behind her.’

‘I thought you said that it couldn’t be contained?’ Lydia said. ‘Won’t she just feed on all the energy inside and get even stronger?’

Freya smiled at her gratefully. Lydia may not have been a witch, but she certainly thought like one. ‘No. The Glutton is, at its core, a being of pure magical energy. All we need to do is unravel her, and spread her consciousness out through such a huge amount of magic that she won’t be able to reconstitute. Think of it like throwing a glass of water into the sea - that glass of water is still there, but you’d never be able to find all those individual water molecules again in a billion years.’

‘And how are we going to unravel her? There’s no way she’s going to let us do that,’ Kol said. ‘And I’ve never heard of a single magical way to do what you’re trying to accomplish here.’

‘It’s us, isn’t it?’ Rebekah realised. ‘You’re going to use us.’

‘Right as always, little sister,’ Freya confirmed. ‘It’s true that we’re all magical. Or almost all of us, anyway,’ she said, nodding at Stiles, who looked grumpy. ‘But magic isn’t just about who we are, or what we are. It’s about how we connect with one another. Magic, at its core, is about a relationship between nature and ourselves. Or, between other magical beings.’

‘I am not having an orgy,’ Malia said. ‘I don’t care if it means the end of the world, there is no way I’m sleeping with all of you. No offense.’

‘I think Freya has something else in mind,’ Elijah replied, then seemed to reconsider. ‘Or at least, I hope she does.’

Freya actually managed to laugh, here at the edge of the end of all worlds. ‘No, nothing like that. All we need to do is concentrate. On the bonds we’ve developed with each other - between our family, between your pack,’ she said, pointing at each of the Mikaelsons and the pack in turn, ‘and between all of us together. In the short time we’ve known each other, we’ve accomplished miraculous things, and discovered that there’s not that much different between us after all. I know we can all feel it. And we can use those bonds to tear The Glutton apart, and submerge it into the Nemeton forever.’

There was a murmur around the group, scepticism and eagerness, curiosity and worry all at once. Eventually Scott, as always, stepped forward.

‘Freya’s right; we have connected. It was no coincidence that we paired off the way we did. The Nemeton knew what we’d need to do, and it gave us the experience we’d need to do it. We can do this.’

Klaus shook his head in disbelief. ‘Let’s just get on with this, shall we? I for one would like to get home to my daughter at some point today, and for that to happen there needs to be a dimension waiting for me. If our only hope is the power of love or some such, then that is where we will hedge our bets.’ 

Freya indicated the Nemeton in front of them once again. ‘Place your hand on the stump, and think about your friends. Your family. The other people in the room. The bonds between us all. The Nemeton should do the rest.’

‘Are we really trusting a tree?’ Rebekah asked, and Malia nodded in agreement. 

‘This thing’s more trouble than it’s worth.’

‘Do we have any other choice right now?’ Lydia posed. ‘Between fighting and death, I choose fighting, and that means with whatever weapons we have at our disposal.’

Scott and Klaus were the first ones up to the tree stump. They shared a ‘this is ridiculous’ glance, and then placed their hands onto the tree. It wasn’t sharp, or rough to the touch as it should be, but smooth and flawless, like marble instead of wood. As soon as their skin touched it, they were held fast. They could feel a connection, a power that they couldn’t describe, and gasped audibly.

‘Now, everyone!’ Klaus commanded. The others joined them, kneeling down and placing their hands on the tree stump as Klaus and Scott had done. When all ten of them had done so, the Nemeton began its work.

The McCall pack - its members often thrown together by circumstance but now closer than anyone could possibly be. These five teenagers had endured so much, and came through the other side of their ordeals all the stronger for it. They were closer than friends, closer than family - they were a pack and, like the bands of black that circled Scott’s arm, they had been forged in fire.

The Mikaelson family - although family wasn’t a strong enough word to describe their relationships with each other. They had been together for thousands of years, in various combinations, and with various allegiances too. But despite their differences, they would stand by one another through thick and thin. There was nothing any member of the Mikaelsons wouldn’t do for another. They were stronger together but, even apart, they would be united. Always and forever.

Scott and Klaus, leaders of their groups, one confident to the point of arrogance and the other often plagued with doubts. The two bonded most by family, by their love for those around them. Klaus’ admiration for Scott’s relationship with his mother. Scott’s confidence that Klaus was a good parent, even if he wasn’t so sure. The True Alpha and the hybrid Original, two halves of the same coin.

Rebekah and Stiles, perhaps the most different of those assembled and the most surprised to see the common ground that they shared. The impetuous Rebekah, who acted on impulse and loved with all her heart, and the devoted Stiles who cared for one above all else and could reason out a problem without even trying. And yet, they both knew who they were, how their experiences had shaped them, and what that meant to them moving forward. The ones with the troubled pasts, and the uncertain futures.

Malia and Elijah, the two who appeared the most disparate at first glance but were almost identical under the skin. Both struggling with inner conflicts, with rage and fear and the thought that they would hurt or abandon the ones they loved. And yet, both had overcome their issues, and were stronger for it. Two roads that had lead to the same solutions - and both still works in progress.

Lydia and Freya, the overlooked. The ones that sacrificed the most for their loved ones, the ones that endured the most hardship in order to save those around them. And the ones that were underestimated far too often, and rose to the challenge each and every time. The banshee and the witch, the forces to be reckoned with.

And Kol and Liam, the brash, bullheaded, fury-filled pair that opened their hearts wide and loved so deeply that they changed their very character. The one that fought for control every second of his life, and the one that had spent so long out of control that he barely knew how to exist with it. The littlest werewolf, and the deadliest Original.

The Nemeton took all the bonds they had forged, within each group and beyond, and used them to save all worlds.

*********

It was as if no time had passed at all. Each opened their eyes, and they were back in the clearing, The Glutton captured by their circle, and the ball of magical energy pulsating above them. And then, it moved.

Slowly at first, and then quicker, the ball returned to the Nemeton and dropped inside it, sliding through the top of the stump as if it were a pool of water. The Glutton screamed in anguish.

‘No! That is my energy to feast on! How dare you take it from me! What have you done?’ she rounded on the group in turn, darkness filling her eyes and brown smoke billowing around her like a tornado of dirt.

The Glutton, sensing its imminent defeat, rounded on the nearest person it could find to attack. Liam bared his fangs in defiance as the creature lurched closer, tightening his grip on the Originals next to him.

Across the clearing, thick, pulsating tendrils erupted from the Nemeton and snaked towards The Glutton. They slammed into her with tremendous force, binding her arms and legs, lashing across her like clinging ivy and driving her to the floor.

The Glutton collapsed hard on her back, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Everywhere the tendrils touched her skin seemed to shimmer and crack, dark smoke leaking out from within her. Her beautiful woman form fell away as the tendrils began to drag her back towards the tree stump. Lydia and Freya broke their connection, stepping aside to allow The Glutton to pass.

‘No! This is unacceptable! That magic was mine to devour, how dar-’ the creature shrieked, but the magic that had allowed her to speak was gone as well and soon all she could do was scream. As the Mikaelsons and the McCall pack watched, the beautiful woman became the smokey creature they had met before, clawing at the ground, at her stomach, at the air itself as if it could stop her progress towards the Nemeton.

But it was not to be. The Glutton was dragged up onto the stump as the tendrils retracted, and then down into the centre as the ball of magical energy before it had been. One final shriek escaped its lips, and then The Glutton was gone, trapped inside the Nemeton, subsumed within its magic for all eternity.

The wind died down almost instantly, the leaves and other detritus that had been blowing around the clearing settling back onto the ground. Somewhere nearby, a bird began to chirp a merry tune in celebration. And above the trees, the sun finally made itself known. The long night was over, and the world, all worlds, were safe once again.

The pack and the Mikaelsons stared at the Nemeton, a quiet, unassuming tree stump once more. The greatest repository of magic in all dimensions, and no one would be any the wiser just by looking at it. The grey decay that had coated it before was nowhere to be seen.

Stiles was the first to break the silence, tearing his eyes away from the Nemeton and out up into the morning light. ‘Should we get you guys out of here?’ he asked, looking towards the vampires. ‘Don’t you guys, you know, burn to ash out in the sun? That’d be a bummer, especially after everything we’ve just been through.’

Each of the vampires laughed, which only intensified as Stiles’ confused look turned to one of frustration. ‘What? What did I say?’

Rebekah was the first to take pity on him. ‘We’re fine. We’re protected, don’t you worry. Like you say, it’d be bad luck to save all of reality and then disintegrate because we forgot to put our daylight rings on.’

‘So, I guess, this is it?’ Scott asked tentatively. ‘Unless you guys want to stay for breakfast or something?’

Klaus looked to his siblings and back again, shaking his head sadly. ‘No, I’m afraid we cannot stay, although we appreciate the invitation. There are still problems to be solved in our own dimension, and I have a daughter that I should be getting back to. Her mother will likely go spare if we’re away for too long.’

Scott gave him a sympathetic look, and nodded sadly. ‘It’s okay, we get it. I know I’ve got a lot of explaining to do for my mom, so we should all probably head home too.’

‘Do you need any help getting home?’ Lydia asked Freya, who shook her head, one hand on the base of the Nemeton.

‘Oh, I don’t think so. This should be a lot easier from this side.’ She touched the tree stump lightly with her fingertips, and almost instantly a swirling vortex of energy identical to the one that had heralded the Originals’ arrival appeared, revolving in the air above.

The two groups split in half again, the pack facing the Mikaelsons with their backs to the portal as they said their final goodbyes.

‘I meant what I said earlier,’ Klaus began, addressing Scott, leader to leader. ‘It has been a rare pleasure to meet a group such as yourselves. Your world is in good hands, and I hope one day we can meet again.’

‘Likewise,’ Scott replied. ‘Maybe next time don’t bring a magic-eating monster with you though.’

‘We’ll be sure to leave that at home next time, yes.’

The two grasped each other’s forearms and shook, a level of respect that Klaus reserved for very few people indeed.

Stiles waved awkwardly at Rebekah, who grinned mischievously back. She seemed to consider something for a moment, and then crossed the gap between them and placed a chaste kiss on his lips. Stiles’ eyes boggled, and his lips hung there as Rebekah withdrew, not quite sure what had happened.

‘Be good, Stiles,’ she winked, and caught Lydia’s eye as she returned to her family. 

Lydia, for her part, rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘You get one free one, but next time you’ll have to go through me,’ she joked, and Rebekah laughed in return.

‘I wouldn’t even think it.’

Malia and Elijah squared up, and Elijah reached out a hand to shake farewell, unsure what the proper etiquette was in this position. Malia looked at it like a foreign object, and then pushed past it and embraced the taller man tightly. Elijah, now even more confused, returned the hug as best he could.

‘I don’t usually hug,’ Malia said, muffled against his back, ‘but this feels appropriate, right?’

‘I don’t usually receive hugs, so your guess is as good as mine,’ Elijah admitted. The two broke apart, and he smiled once again. ‘Mind yourself, little coyote. Always keep your family close, and you will never go far astray.’

‘Are you sure you’re talking to me, and not yourself?’ Malia asked, and Elijah, so articulate and well-spoken, didn’t know what to say.

Freya and Lydia exchanged smiles. ‘I’ve got your cell phone number,’ Freya said, waving a small piece of paper. ‘Once I get some interdimensional minutes, I’ll give you a call.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Lydia said. ‘Don’t be a stranger. There’s still a lot you need to teach me.’

‘I’ve never met someone so eager to do homework.’

‘There’s no one quite like me, not in any dimension.’ 

‘Of that, I have no doubt.’

And finally, Kol and Liam sized each other up one last time. Kol punched him lightly in the shoulder, and Liam grinned. ‘Next time I see you, I want a rematch,’ he promised.

‘Maybe next time you see me, you’ll be tall enough to ride a rollercoaster,’ Kol joked, and Liam looked affronted.

‘Watch your back, Mikaelson,’ he said, but there was no venom to the threat this time.

‘The same to you, Dunbar,’ Kol replied.

And then the goodbyes were done, and there was no more reason for the two groups to stay. The Mikaelsons waved farewell, and one by one disappeared through the portal back to their own world.

The vortex swirled for a few seconds after the final Original had stepped through, before fizzling out with a spark and vanishing as if it had never been there at all.

Scott looked around at his friends, unsure of what to say next. ‘That’s one of the weirder nights we’ve had in awhile,’ he said lamely.

‘Definitely up there in the top ten,’ Stiles agreed.

‘My dad’s going to kill me when he finds out I was out all night,’ Liam realised, sighing.

‘Never mind that, Mason’s going to be furious you didn’t invite him to deal with the vampires and witches and magic-eating monsters. I’d worry about him more than your dad,’ Malia said, brutally honest as ever.

Liam groaned even louder at the prospect.

Lydia and Stiles joined hands, smiling at each other. Lydia brought her face close to Stiles’ ear, and he leaned down expectantly.

‘If you ever kiss another girl while you’re with me, I will banshee scream in your ear so loud that you’ll never be able to hear your own sarcastic comments again,’ she promised, and Stiles’s mouth fell open. He gabbled, unable to work out what to say to apologise, and then stopped as Lydia laughed, joining in instead as he realised the joke was on him.

Malia, Liam, and Scott soon caught on and, together, the five friends walked out of Beacon Hills woods and back to Stiles’ Jeep, back to their (relatively) normal lives.

*********

The five Mikaelsons reappeared in the courtyard of the Compound, New Orleans daylight streaming in through the windows. They had only been away a few hours, but it felt like a lifetime had passed.

‘I don’t know about anyone else,’ Rebekah said, ‘but I need a spa day, and then I need to sleep for a week.’

‘I second that,’ Freya said, raising a hand to include herself in whatever relaxation centre appointment Rebekah was about to make.

‘Screw that, I need a drink,’ Kol complained. ‘Preferably someone young, and intoxicated.’

‘Don’t make a mess,’ Elijah warned. ‘Marcel will have our heads if we cause trouble in ‘his’ city.’

His siblings scattered to opposite ends of the Compound, each unwinding from their adventure in their own way, leaving Klaus alone in the courtyard. He stared up into the morning sky and breathed a rare sigh of relief.

‘Daddy!’ said a voice, and Klaus’s eyes snapped open quickly, turning towards the sound. Running across the courtyard was Hope, his daughter, the most precious thing in the world, closely followed by Hayley.

‘You look like you’ve been through a lot,’ she observed. ‘We’ve only been gone a day, what kind of trouble could you possibly have gotten yourself into in one day?’

Klaus took Hope into his arms, holding her close as if she were the only thing keeping him alive, and took Hayley’s hand, marching them both towards the breakfast room.

‘Hayley, my dear, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

*********

In a quiet clearing, near the centre of Beacon Hills woods, the Nemeton stood alone. It didn’t think, not in the same way people thought. But, in its own way, it felt proud. Proud of those it had selected as its protectors. Proud of those that had travelled across dimensions to right their wrongs. And proud that, thanks to the bonds that had been forged, all worlds would be safe once again.

And deep within the unending reservoir of magic that was the Nemeton, trapped forevermore thanks to the united power of the Originals and the McCall pack, The Glutton screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we go. 
> 
> This last chapter was a little long, but I couldn't find a good place to cut it in half so y'know. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you had as much fun reading it. If you've stuck with me this long, thank you very much!


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